You Never Complain About Breathing
On why we complain about what we've declared we cannot change
Your lungs fill and empty thousands of times daily. The process is largely involuntary, continues whether you attend to it or not, keeps you alive through work you neither chose nor can stop. Yet you don’t spend hours discussing how unfair it is that you must breathe. You don’t gather with friends to share grievances about the burden of respiration. You don’t lie awake at night frustrated that breathing won’t simply take care of itself without your body’s constant participation.
Why not? Because you understand completely that breathing is something your body does that you have no meaningful control over. You accept it the way you accept gravity. The absence of control makes complaint pointless.
Now think about what you do complain about. The political situation. Your job. Other people’s behavior. The economy. Your family’s dysfunction. Your circumstances. These complaints can consume hours, fill conversations, occupy mental space for days.
What makes these different from breathing? You believe, at some level, that they could be different. That they should be different. That if something were about the world or other people or your situation, these problems wouldn’t exist. The complaint reveals your belief that change is possible but not happening.
What’s strange is that you also believe you can’t change these things. If you thought you could change them, you wouldn’t complain. You’d act. Complaint is what happens in the gap between believing something could be different and believing you can’t make it different.
Epictetus watched his students complain endlessly. About the difficulty of philosophy. About their family obligations. About political injustices. About social expectations. He’d listen, then ask a question that stopped most of them cold: “Is this something you can control?”
If they said yes, he’d ask why they were complaining instead of changing it. If they said no, he’d ask why they were complaining about something outside their control. Either way, the complaint revealed confusion about their own agency.
Marcus Aurelius made this question the center of his entire practice. Not as abstract philosophy but as a daily examination he applied to everything that disturbed him. “Is this in my control?” became his way of sorting reality into two categories: things he could influence and things he couldn’t. The first category demanded action. The second category demanded acceptance. Neither category warranted complaint.
Complaint, he realized, was what happened when you refused to make this sorting. When you wanted something to be in your control that wasn’t. When you knew something was in your control but didn’t want to pay the cost of exercising that control. Complaint lived in the refusal to be honest about where your agency actually ended.
This is why tracking your complaints reveals so much. Each complaint announces where you’re confused about or avoiding the truth of your own power.
Listen to your own complaints for a day. Not what you say bothers you in abstract conversations, but what captures your dissatisfaction enough that you voice it, think about it, return to it repeatedly.
The traffic. The government. Your financial situation. How people treat you. Your health. Your aging. The state of culture. The behavior of strangers on the internet. The weather.
Each complaint contains a hidden declaration. You’re announcing: “This is wrong, this could be different, but I can’t make it different.” You’re identifying yourself as someone who sees problems clearly but lacks agency to solve them.
But is that claim accurate? Or is it just comfortable?
Consider the financial complaints. You’re frustrated by not having enough money. This complaint can run for years. Money is tight, opportunities are limited, the system is rigged against people in your situation.
Apply Marcus’s question: Is your financial situation in your control?
The honest answer is complicated. You can’t control the economic system. You can’t control how wealth is distributed. You can’t control that you weren’t born into wealth. These are genuinely outside your control.
But you can control whether you acquire new skills. You can control whether you apply for different jobs. You can control your spending patterns. You can control whether you take financial risks. You can control whether you move to places with lower cost of living or better opportunities. You can control how many hours you work and how hard you work during those hours.
The complaint about money serves a specific purpose: it explains why you’re not doing these things. The system is rigged, so why try? Your situation makes it impossible. The game is already decided. The complaint lets you focus on what you can’t control while ignoring what you can control but would rather not confront.
Here’s the calculation happening underneath most complaints: “I could change this if I were willing to pay [specific cost]. Moving to a cheaper city would improve my finances but cost me proximity to family. Changing careers would increase income but require years of retraining and temporary income loss. Starting a business might work but might also fail publicly and deplete my savings. I’m not willing to pay these costs. Therefore I’ll complain about the situation as if it’s beyond my control rather than admitting I’m choosing to keep it this way because the alternatives are scarier or more uncomfortable.”
The complaint masks the choice. It frames you as victim when you’re actually making calculations about costs you’re willing to bear. And as long as you’re framing yourself as victim, you don’t have to examine whether your calculations are serving you or just protecting you from discomfort.
The same mechanism appears everywhere once you start looking for it. You complain about relationships while avoiding difficult conversations that might improve them or end them. The conversation is in your control. Having it would cost you comfort, might create conflict, might force changes you’re not ready for. So you complain about the relationship instead of choosing either to fix it or leave it.
You complain about your health while your daily choices about food, exercise, and sleep remain unchanged. These choices are in your control. Changing them would require discipline you don’t want to exercise, pleasures you don’t want to sacrifice, discomfort you don’t want to endure. So you complain about your health as if it’s something happening to you rather than something you’re creating through choices you make hourly.
You complain about your work while avoiding the risks required to change it. Updating your skills is in your control but takes time you’re using for other things. Applying to new positions is in your control but requires facing rejection. Starting something of your own is in your control but means risking security for possibility. These costs feel too high. So you complain about the work situation as if you’re trapped when you’re actually choosing to stay because leaving would be harder.
Each complaint reveals the same structure: something could be different, you could try things that might make it different, you’ve decided the costs of trying exceed the costs of staying, but you’re unwilling to own that decision. The complaint lets you have it both ways. You get to keep things as they are while experiencing yourself as someone who wants change but is prevented from achieving it.
Seneca watched this in Rome’s wealthy classes constantly. People with extraordinary resources who complained endlessly. About their obligations. About social expectations. About how difficult their lives were. They weren’t lying. Their lives felt genuinely difficult. But the difficulty came largely from problems they could solve if they were willing to give up comforts, take risks, or accept temporary loss for long-term gain.
Their complaints served to obscure this reality. By focusing on how hard everything was, they avoided examining how much they were choosing the hardness by refusing to change the conditions that created it. The complaint created the illusion of powerlessness while maintaining the reality of choosing not to use their power.
But what about genuine powerlessness? What about injustice that exists beyond your capacity to address it? What about circumstances truly outside your control?
Here’s where the Stoic position becomes sharp: even if you’re genuinely powerless over a situation, complaint doesn’t change that. You’re still powerless. You’re just powerless plus bitter. The complaint adds suffering without adding capability.
You can acknowledge injustice without complaining about it. You can work toward change without treating your inability to change things instantly as a source of constant grievance. You can accept that many things are wrong and outside your control while putting your energy into the things you can actually influence.
The distinction matters because complaint about what you truly can’t control serves only one purpose: it makes you suffer more than the situation already makes you suffer. The past happened. You can’t change it. Complaint about the past adds present suffering to past harm. Others will behave according to their character and circumstances. You can’t control that. Complaint about their behavior adds your own agitation to whatever consequences their behavior produces.
Marcus, facing plague and war and betrayal, kept returning to this sorting. Some things demand action. Some things demand acceptance. Nothing demands complaint. When he found himself complaining internally, he recognized it as a signal: he was either avoiding action he could take or refusing acceptance of what he couldn’t change.
This is why examining your complaints reveals where you’re stuck. Every persistent complaint marks a place where you’re neither acting nor accepting. You’re neither using the control you have nor acknowledging its limits. You’re suspended in the complaint itself, which provides emotional satisfaction while changing nothing about what you’re complaining about.
Watch what happens when you stop complaining about something. You lose the bond with people who share that complaint. You lose the energy the complaint provided. You lose the feeling of doing something. You’re left with just yourself and Marcus’s question: Is this in my control?
If yes: why aren’t you changing it? Usually because changing it would cost something you’re not willing to pay. The complaint was serving to avoid admitting this. Without the complaint, you have to face the choice directly: either pay the cost of change or accept the situation as it is. Both require honesty the complaint was protecting you from.
If no: why are you suffering about something you can’t change? Usually because accepting your powerlessness feels like giving up or admitting defeat. The complaint was serving to maintain the illusion that you still have agency even though you’re not using it. Without the complaint, you have to accept genuine limitations, which is harder than raging against them but less exhausting in the long run.
Over years, complaint compounds into a fundamental stance toward life. You become someone who notices what’s wrong everywhere, who has sophisticated analyses of all problems, who understands exactly why everything is difficult but rarely examines what you could actually do about it. You practice helplessness until helplessness becomes your default relationship with difficulty.
The alternative isn’t naive optimism that everything is within your control. It’s honest examination of where your actual agency lies and ruthless commitment to using it while accepting what truly lies beyond it. It’s taking responsibility for what’s yours to change and releasing grievance about what isn’t.
This examination often reveals uncomfortable truths. You have more agency than you’ve been claiming. Your complaints have been explaining why you’re not using that agency. You’ve been choosing helplessness because agency comes with risks and difficulties you’d rather avoid.
But here’s what becomes possible when you stop: you gain clarity about where you can actually act. You stop wasting energy on rehearsing grievances and start focusing it on actions that might actually change what bothers you. You trade the comfort of explained powerlessness for the discomfort of acknowledged responsibility. You give up being someone who sees clearly why things are bad but can’t change them and become someone who might change what they can while accepting what they can’t.
You accepted breathing because you knew you had no choice. Your body requires oxygen. No amount of complaint will change this. Your complete lack of control makes acceptance automatic.
What if you examined your other complaints with the same honesty? What if you sorted them as clearly as you sort breathing? This is genuinely outside my control, so I’ll accept it and put my energy elsewhere. This is within my control, so I’ll act on it or consciously choose not to and accept that choice. This complaint is protecting me from admitting I could change this but don’t want to pay what change would cost.
The sorting is difficult because it requires admitting things about yourself the complaint was obscuring. That you’re choosing comfort over growth. That you’re avoiding risk. That you’re more attached to how things are than you claim to be. That your complaints about powerlessness are sometimes accurate and sometimes just comfortable fictions.
But difficulty isn’t the same as impossibility. You can examine your complaints. You can ask Marcus’s question. You can sort what’s yours to change from what isn’t. You can stop using complaint to avoid responsibility or to add suffering to situations you genuinely can’t control.
What you complain about reveals what you believe about your agency. Often that belief serves you poorly. It keeps you stuck in situations you could change. It makes you suffer about situations you can’t change. It protects you from examining whether you’re actually powerless or just comfortable claiming powerlessness.
The question is whether you’re willing to examine that belief honestly. To test whether your complaints reflect accurate understanding of your constraints or just comfortable avoidance of your choices.
📝 Today’s Stoic Gameplan
Track and categorize: For one day, write down every complaint. For each one, ask Marcus’s question: “Is this in my control?” Make three lists: (1) Things I could change if I tried, (2) Things I genuinely can’t change, (3) Things I’m not sure about.
Examine one calculation: Take your most frequent complaint from list 1. Write down: “I could change this by [action], but that would cost me [specific thing]. I’ve decided that cost is too high, so I’m choosing to keep things as they are.” Read it back. Is that decision serving you?
Practice the redirect: For one week, when a complaint arises, immediately follow it with Marcus’s question. If it’s in your control: name one action you could take today. If it’s not: consciously accept it and redirect attention to what you can control. Notice how this changes your experience.
Test one silence: Stop voicing your most frequent complaint for one week. When it arises internally, ask: “What am I avoiding by complaining instead of acting or accepting?” Write down what you discover.
Your complaints map your beliefs about your own agency. Those beliefs are often inaccurate, serving only to justify inaction or add unnecessary suffering. Examining them honestly reveals where you’ve been claiming powerlessness while actually making choices, where you’ve been suffering voluntarily about what you genuinely can’t change.
The question isn’t whether everything is within your control. It’s whether you’re willing to be honest about what is and what isn’t, and whether you’re willing to act on that honesty.
Stay stoic,
SW
Such a great post loved it
Actions truly do speak louder than words. As always, on point. A magnificent and proactive post to kick off the week. Thank you.