Assessing if Your Basic Attitude Toward Life is Appreciative or Demanding

Are you upset or irritated at what you lack, or appreciative and grateful for what you have? Which do you see first, the doughnut or the hole? Do you remember the fairy tale of the poor man who spared the life of an enchanted fish? In return he was asked to name his own reward. He at first asked nothing. When he told his wife, she insisted that he go back and request a neat little hut to replace the pig sty in which they had been living. This he did, and the request was granted. But the wife was not satisfied. Next she demanded a large and expensive house. After she got this, she demanded a huge palace. Even this did not satisfy her, and she demanded to be made king. This and even greater demands were granted. Then she insisted that she be made like God. She ended up where she began; in the pig sty.

Such has been, to a surprising degree, the general outline of the story of Napoleon and, in our day, of Adolf Hitler. Many others, while less successful in their beginnings, have the same demanding attitude toward life. As marriage partners, they should be avoided. But how is one to know? How can the young person interested in a particular somebody find out beforehand that marriage will mean a lifetime policy of appeasement of a person who can never be satisfied until death or the divorce court judge us do part? Here are some suggestions regarding the symptoms.

The attention of this type of demanding person is centered upon what they do not have, or conditions which ought to be different. If they go on a picnic they will constantly be harping on the fact that Susan forgot to put the ice cubes in the lemonade, or Sam and Sally were late, or Jimmie forgot to bring his sweater. Therefore the whole occasion has been ruined for them, and they will make sure that it is also ruined for everyone else. If they see a house they will not see the lovely yard or the tasteful drapes. The conspicuous facts will be the clash of colors in the living room, or the absence of handles on the windows. No matter how complete their wardrobes, the conspicuous thing in their eyes will be the fur coat, the elaborate dinner dress, or the pearl necklaces which they do not have. Such attitudes of constant complaint should be signs for those who are matrimonial prospects to take cover.

A second symptom is that such a person cannot be pleased. They seem to reject everybody. The singer flats her high notes. The strings in the orchestra were not good. The actor ruined one scene. The grades which the children get in school are never high enough. The children are not obedient enough, or smart enough. The husband (or the wife) is always doing something stupid, and constantly reminded of his shortcomings. Nothing that anybody can do is good enough. People who feel like this should remain in single blessedness.

Another form of this difficulty is the belief that our 'problems' could be solved if we only had enough of 'everything.' If only I had enough money, sex, clothes, a nice enough house, a good enough car, a social standing which was high enough, then I would find life good. Such people are partly right in their diagnosis. They are unhappy because they are deprived. Their real tragedy is that they do not know what they lack. This leads to their pitiable efforts to get more, and ever more, of what they have, and their failure to find real satisfactions after they have been successful. They are like a glutton whose diet lacks some essential elements. He keeps on eating because he is really hungry. He thinks that if only he can get enough food . . . yet more and richer food of the same kind can only make him uncomfortable and fat. No wonder he is desperate. So it is with the hungers of personality.

People whose real needs are to love others and to be at peace within themselves mistakenly suppose that more money, power or prestige will satisfy their hungers. They are often worse off when they succeed than when they fail, because in failure they can always hope that success would make them happy. We rightly feel sorry for such people. But their difficulties lie mainly within themselves. Until these have been corrected, they cannot make a success of marriage or of any other intimate relationship. However hungry they may be for companionship and love, to marry such a one before he was cured would be only to add an unhappy marriage to his woes. For a good marriage risk, find the girl who would be grateful for the honest love of a worthy man; grateful for the home she could enjoy. Find the man who would be grateful for a family; the man who can enjoy simple pleasures, magazines, books, occasional outings, ball games, and especially the companionship of friends. Find the people who enjoy children, who like to hear their neighbors sing in the church choir, or play in band concerts, if there is plenty of popcorn. Life is good for those who are able to select and appropriate the parts in it which are good.

An appreciative attitude toward life should not, and need not lead to unwholesome docility. To select the good is not to close our eyes to the evil, or to fail to combat it. We should be able to distinguish between good and bad in music, government, bananas and carpentry work. The optimist can be more dangerous than the pessimist. The joys of simple men can become the opportunities of charlatans and knaves. The good prospective mate is not insensitive to evils. He does approach all of life, both evil and good, with a creative attitude. He differs from the whiner, the grouch and the misanthrope not in what he sees, but in what he selects to live with.

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