For YEARS, my mother-in-law wore a button on her clothes that simply said, “no whining.” She was a remarkable woman in many ways; she did not wear that button because she cared about the latest fashion or any potential social repercussions of wearing “flair.” Mimi had a tough journey in life, and she learned early on that whining didn’t help any situation. So if her kids, or her kids’ friends, or her kids’ husbands, or her kids’ kids, or really anybody for that matter began complaining about a particular situation, she would simply tap the button three times and effectively shut down one of the most debilitating and unexamined things humans participate in regularly: whining.
