Tend Your Garden, But Don’t Forget the Gate

“Don’t complain, don’t explain.”

It sounds sharp, carved out of granite. A Stoic maxim for the ages. Keep your head down. Do the work. Endure.

It’s an appealing mantra, especially if you’ve ever been through a rough patch and found that silence was more dignified than pleading your case to someone who wasn’t really listening anyway. It becomes armor. But like armor, it can get heavy. And isolating.

I used to wear that phrase like a badge. Maybe it was upbringing, maybe it was branding: self-reliant, emotionally bulletproof. A man of few words (unless you pay me to write them). I found strength in not complaining. Control in not explaining.

But over time, I realized that strength was sometimes just well-dressed avoidance.

The Stoics weren’t wrong. They just weren’t finished.

Let’s rewind.

A few years ago, I was going through a professional situation where I felt like the walls were closing in. Stress. Misunderstandings. Not outright betrayal, but close enough that you stop leaving your back exposed. I kept it together. I didn’t vent to coworkers. I didn’t send the long email (okay, I drafted it…then deleted it). I followed the Stoic path: endured, adapted, evolved. But it damn near broke me inside.

Eventually, I did talk, to the right people. My wife. A trusted friend. A therapist. Not to complain, but to unburden. Not to explain, but to be understood. And it made all the difference.

Complaining isn’t inherently weak. It’s just dangerous in the wrong hands or to the wrong audience. If your “venting” becomes a performance or a brand, you’re doing it wrong. If it becomes your entire identity, you’ve gone from Stoic to Eeyore with WiFi.

There’s nuance in this. The original Stoic teaching wasn’t about emotional constipation. It was about discernment. Choose your responses carefully. Choose your audience wisely. The value isn’t in bottling up emotion; it’s in deciding where to pour it.

That brings me to another quote, this one from Candide by Voltaire: Il faut cultiver notre jardin. We must tend our garden.

It’s a beautiful metaphor. Do your work. Keep your space. Don’t waste energy raging at the world’s injustice; pull your weeds. Plant what you can. But even gardens have gates. And sometimes, a trusted neighbor needs to be let in. Not to take over, not to fix—but to sit on the bench, maybe share a drink, and say, Yeah, that sucks.

The wisdom isn’t in silence. It’s in calibration.

You don’t owe the world your pain, but you also don’t have to hide it in the shed behind the compost pile. Share it with people who have earned it. Those who know the difference between gossip and grace.

So yes, don’t complain—and don’t explain—unless the act of sharing is part of the healing. Unless the explanation leads to connection. Unless the silence is costing you more than the words would.

The Stoics weren’t trying to make us stone. They were trying to keep us from crumbling. That’s a distinction worth tending.