The word complain derives from the Latin for sob or bewail. It may seem that a complainer is doing something but, no, he’s just salting his soup. Complaint acts without doing. It’s an absence of love, an indifference to what is being complained about.
New York, New York lyrics: “I’m number one / Top of the list / Head of the heap / King of the hill”
When we stand at the summit of personal achievement, there is only one way to go: Down.
When a man loses his fear of pain, he stops craving pleasure. Freedom from one is freedom from the other. Pain and pleasure are back to front, front to back. One is both.
Let’s view our thoughts from a distance, with the non-reactive interest of a nephrologist surveying a cloudscape. What he sees is, well, what he sees. Here comes a cumulonimbus. There goes a cumulonimbus.
To break our attachment to our thoughts, we should not engage with them. What’s required is that we cultivate a certain aloofness, a majestic indifferency to their false urgency and howls for attention.
Men's Work 