Letters

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Wednesday
May 16, 2001

Bad as a New York cabbie

I only just read your article ["Quit whining"]; perhaps it is a good thing that it is so. It is clear you are confusing a number of issues. If you are writing an admonition to the Iranians to stop whining, then do that. Encourage us to stop whining. Do so in the great traditions of our culture: with wisdom, understanding, with humility, with depth. Your article sounds like one written by a base New York cab driver.

I have some questions for you. Why are you framing it as though it is God who is speaking, and is tired of whining? How do you know what God would say to Iranians? Do you know God? Have you communed with Him so as to know His mind, His heart, and the issues that concern Him, given every human being (including yourself)?

Have you heard His invitations to you to come and fellowship with Him, and get to know His heart and mind? Has he been so good to you to have brought you to a point of seeing your need for Him, and show you every answer He has ready for every need of yours (including His answer to your questions about your own death)?

Don't quote God, and push your own experience of a frustrated man and make those the thoughts of an infinite God. Show some fortitude! Show some real strength.

You are confused. If you are demanding that Iranians stop whining, are you not then whining about the whining of others? At least these other people, when they mourn their own folly, and bad decisions, they are giving voice to some real faults - for humans that is the doorway to sanity and health (mental health, mind you).

Your whining has more to do with your lack of tolerance for having to put up with their heart ache. It is a different thing to complain about a real problem versus complaining about why someone is complaining. Be cautious about your claims - as though you possessed the "universal solvent".

So if you want to write a satire about people complaining, then write one that isn't so American. Give some thought, spend some time, include yourself as one of the whiners. Better yet, tap the pain, cauterize it, taste it, carry it, relieve it, cover it with hope, use it to teach about real life, show what it means to be a man whose brain is above the shoulders, be an Iranian! In hopes of your gradual ascent out of your adolescence

Mehryar

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