On Whining

"One of the things about getting older is that you stop whining. One of the reasons you stop whining is because your experience conveys to you that your trouble is tiny compared to lots of trouble around. Once you feel that clearly, that your trouble is tiny and that there are people at this moment really being tortured, really being strapped tochairs, really having electrodes pasted on their bodies, that there are situations which are truly hellish that thousands, maybe millions of people are in at this moment, then even though you do not wish to deny the truth of your own feelings, once you put your own feelings in perspective, then there is an invitation never again to whine about your own situation. So yeah, I’ve known a little bit of trouble. I’ve experienced the break up of a family. I’ve experienced a few things here and there but that’s "nothing, nothing to what’s really going down in this world. "

Leonard Cohen’s comments from a 1988 CBC broadcast Leonard Cohen: A Portrait in First Person” narrated by Moses Znaimer.