why we should stop whining :)

Brigham Young said it 150 years ago and I think it applies more than ever today when we so often, and so quickly, use social networking to get messages across to others:


"If persons think they have greater sorrow and affliction than any others, when they reveal that sorrow and affliction, it produces fruit. You frequently hear brethren and sisters say that they feel so tried and tempted, and have so many cares, and are so buffeted, that they must give vent to their feelings; and they yield to the temptation, and deal out their unpleasant sensations to their families and neighbours. Make up your minds thoroughly, once for all, that if we have trials, the Lord has suffered them to be brought upon us, and he will give us grace to bear them; and that they do not concern our families, friends, and neighbours, we can bear them off alone. But if we have light or intelligence—that which will do good, we will impart it; but our bad feelings, our desponding feelings, our dark hours, and disagreeable sensations we will keep to ourselves.  


Let that be the determination of every individual, for spirit begets spirit... feelings beget their likeness...If, then, we give vent to all our bad feelings and disagreeable sensations, how quickly we beget the same in others, and load each other down with our troubles, and become sunk in darkness and despair!  If you have anything good to say, speak it...If you have that which tends to death, keep it to yourselves: we do not want it, for we already have plenty of it.


In all your social communications...let all the dark, discontented, murmuring, unhappy, miserable feelings—all the evil fruit of the mind, fall from the tree in silence and unnoticed; and so let it perish, without taking it up to present to your neighbours. But when you have joy and happiness, light and intelligence, truth and virtue, offer that fruit abundantly to your neighbours, and it will do them good, and so strengthen the hands of your fellow-beings."


-Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, Vol. 7 p.268-69, October 6, 1859.