Short Eckhart Tolle teaching (YouTube excerpt) explaining how complaining arises from resistance to the present moment: the ego dislikes the 'now' and seeks escape into a preferred future, so complaining is a mechanism to avoid presence. The clip is a single-speaker reflective monologue focused on presence, complaint, and the ego's pattern of wanting the next thing.
Every day. Little things don't go the way you expect them to go. Complaining. Complaining about people complaining about what you are doing, but you don't really want to be doing it. Why do I have to do this? Well, it's the present. Oh, it's now. But I don't want the now. I want some other place. I want the next thing. And so you're complaining about the now because you want to get out of the now to the next thing. And when the next thing comes, it's the now that you don't like.
Why alcohol feels like relief, and what it is really giving you | Eckhart Tolle
