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Chapter 22 - DON'T RETAIL YOUR WOES. - p. 75

A miserable habit --- It grows as it is fed --- A nuisance to friends and neighbors --- It brings to you more of the same kind --- You will get what you look for --- Looking for trouble brings it --- Don't imagine that you are being "put upon" --- Don't retail your woes.

Don't retail your woes. Do you think that it does you any good to go around with a long face, telling your tale of woe to everyone whom you can induce to listen to you? Do you think that it does you any good? Do you think it helps you to overcome your troubles, or makes your burden any lighter? No, I don't believe that you think any such things. All your experience teaches you that people do not like to listen to long-drawn-out tales of your troubles --- they have enough of their own. Even those who are always ready to lend a helping hand and to give what aid they can to one who needs it resent being made targets for a continuous fusillade of troubles, woes, griefs, etc. And you know very well that a constant repetition of your own woes will only make them seem greater and more real to you. And then the chronic retailer of woe grows to be like the journalist --- develops a keen scent for matter to be dished out to others --- she needs it in her business. When one gets into this habit of carrying about tales to her friends, she runs out of ready material, and eagerly looks around for more with which to supply the demand. She becomes quite an adept at discovering insults, sneers, double-meaning remarks, etc., on the part of her friends and relatives, where nothing of the kind was intended, and she rolls these things over and over in her mind like sweet morsels before she serves them up with appropriate trimmings, to her listeners.

You will notice that I say "her," in speaking of the victim of this demoralizing habit, and some of my readers of that sex will undoubtedly take me to, task for blaming it on the woman instead of the man. Well, you all know my ideas about the equality of the sexes --- about their being different, but one being as good as the other, with the odds a little in favor of the woman. But I feel justified in saying that this habit is one that seems to have a special liking for women, and it generally picks out a woman for its victim in preference to a man. When a man acquires this habit, he becomes such a nuisance to his friends and associates that sooner or later he will notice that they avoid him, and the chances are that some blunt fellow will tell him that he has no time for listening to tales of this kind, and that if he, the complainer, would display the same energy in attending to his business that he does to peddling around tales about how badly he has been used, he would not need any sympathy. But woman, God bless her, does