I think that "complaining" in a broad sense means something different to each one of us. Obviously, we all do it repeatedly and consistently. The place where it becomes personal is that place where the content of the complaints exists. I have a friend who complains almost daily about the personality of one of her supervisors. Then another stays up most nights obsessing about politics. Then another is convinced that the prices at the grocery store are slowly and strategically going up every day. Quite honestly, I couldn't care less about any of those issues. Are these valid issues to spend so much time and energy worrying about? Not to me. But there are other issues that I will complain about from time to time. I had a professor once who said that complaining played a significant role in giving our lives meaning. We do it so often because it reminds us, on an unconscious level that our lives are not perfect and neither are we-but it's okay. In other words-we feel comforted by our lack of perfection, when we persist in our complaining about everyone and everything else around us.

Hello again-firstly, to Pilgrim: I agree and disagree with your premise that in truth, there is no such thing as free will because we are all slaves who are living a predetermined destiny. I agree with the theory that many or even most aspects of our destinies are predetermined. But I disagree with the idea that we are powerless to change many aspects of our destinies by exercising our right to free will. You mentioned suicide in one of your posts, I am a survivor of three attempts in my distant past. I suffered from suicidal depression for more than twenty years and it nearly took me out of the game of life. I changed (and saved) my life by making very different choices. I became fascinated by the writings of Søren Kierkegaard during my recovery. He frequently referred to free will as nothing more than an illusion and I was very dismayed. But thankfully, he was wrong about that. If there was no such thing as free will, the power that each one of us has to make different choices in our lives that change the course of our destinies, I wouldn't be sitting here now, writing these words. I'd be pushing up daisies in a cemetery somewhere.

I had to fight for my sanity every minute of my waking life for many years. I made the choice to fight for my life instead of surrender my fate to mental illness. I made a conscious decision to stop seeing myself as a victim who was stuck inside of a circumstance against their will (a slave) and let myself imagine a very different reality. I allowed myself to feel some hope for my future, all the while knowing that I might be wrong. Over and over again I chose to feel hope and faith in the places where there used to be silent resignation to a fate that was full of darkness. I won the battle in the end. Free will changed my life and permanently changed my brain chemistry. All sorts of different tests were done on my brain when I was in the depths of my depression, contemplating suicide every day and hating every second of my life. Ten years later my brain scans were dramatically different! Not only did I change my life by making totally different choices, I literally changed my anatomy! Today I live with no depression or anxiety at all-I take no medications to maintain emotional stability on a daily basis. It's just over-because I changed my mind, which eventually changed my life.

I believe that we are all free to a certain extent and slaves to a certain extent. It's our jobs as conscientious human beings to figure out in which places we are slaves and in which places we are free. It's not as easy as picking one side or the other-there is a lot of grey area in between. There are many aspects of our lives that we have the power to change and many that we don't. Figuring out which is which is a task that will take a life time! In going back to the original post by Christos-we are brought into this world (against our will), given certain identities (also, against our will) etc. so where is free will? My answer is-in our feelings. We can be put into certain situations which we may or may not be pleased with, but no one can force us to feel a certain way about our circumstances or think the way that they want us to think about the situation. We own our thoughts and feelings, no one can take them away from us. And it is entirely possible that our thoughts and feelings can inspire us to make different choices than we're used to making, which in turn will change the course of our destinies!

I'm new to this forum, so first-hello. My understanding of the concept of freewill is that we are all free to respond to situations that we find ourselves in, in a way that we see fit-without any influence or concern for the thoughts and feelings of others. We are all, almost constantly being put into situations that we would not have chosen for ourselves, but we are free to respond to those situations in a manner that we see fit.