People love to be miserable. They hold onto suffering like a badge of honor, comparing wounds and grievances as if the one who has suffered most wins some unseen prize. Complaints are currency, exchanged in conversations, fueling a cycle where no one seeks solutions, only validation in their hardship. Misery loves company, and in the digital age, it has never been easier to surround yourself with those who will echo your frustrations instead of challenging you to rise above them. Telegram groups, Discord servers, endless social media threads, places where people gather, not to solve their problems, but to bask in them.
And yet, these same people will be the first to accuse others of having a victim complex while nursing one of their own. They scoff at those who cry injustice, all while lamenting how unfair the world has been to them. They mock another’s excuses while making endless justifications for their own stagnation. It’s a game of who is suffering correctly, as if there were virtue in misery so long as it is performed in the right way.
But what does all of this accomplish? What changes when we dwell on what frustrates us? Nothing, except that we dig ourselves deeper into the very misery we claim to hate. You and your friends aren’t getting any better by sitting around, commiserating, and feeding off each other’s dissatisfaction. You’re not building skills. You’re not improving. You’re not working toward anything that actually matters. You’re just marinating in your own discontent, mistaking shared complaints for progress.
The Stoics understood this well. They knew that suffering isn’t in the thing itself but in how we choose to respond to it. “We suffer more in imagination than in reality,” Seneca wrote. Complaining does nothing. True strength does not come from talking about how hard things are—it comes from action.
The gods do not complain. They act. They face trials, betrayals, and struggles, yet they do not sit around lamenting their fates. Zeus did not whine when he overthrew the Titans; he took his place as king. Athena did not moan about injustice; she strategized, she fought, she won. Hermes does not stop to sulk when obstacles appear in his path; he moves forward. Even Dionysus, who suffered madness, loss, and exile, did not spend eternity wailing about it. No. He turned his suffering into transformation and power.
The impulse to complain is not strength, but ego. It is the fragile part of the self crying out for validation, demanding that the world acknowledge its suffering. But the gods do not seek pity, and neither should you. To complain is to assume that your suffering is unique, that you are owed something simply for enduring it. The gods know better. They teach that power comes not from wallowing, but from rising.
Misery is easy. It asks nothing of us but surrender. Strength—true strength—demands that we rise above it. The gods do not waste their breath on endless complaints, and neither should you. Get out into the real world. Work. Create. Learn. Struggle, but struggle toward something. Because while misery loves company, greatness loves solitude, discipline, and action.
@TheApollonian2
