A Year Of Humility (XXXVI): Criticism

 

I hate criticism.

Saying that, of course, is to perhaps state a commonly held axiom:  no-one "likes" criticism.  But I have a special dislike of it, an aversion that is sometimes unreasonable in my attempts to avoid it.

It is fair to ask where it comes from.  Frankly, I have no idea.  I could come up with a possible source, my relationship with TB The Elder when I was younger, but that feels like the standard sort of excuse one could pick out of any commonly available psychology book.  I cannot think of any particularly jarring incident.

All I can tell you is that I do not like it.

I do not have a problem with self criticism - of a certain sort.  I will routinely "bash" myself in conversation, almost to the point that people will look at me in disbelief.  It is another habit, a habit likely born of getting people to react or laugh in tough situations by giving them something else to focus on.  But the criticism is never lasting or impactful in that sense: I know what I am bad at or fail at and can rip myself to shreds over it, but it seldom changes me.

Neither of these, of course, is the point of the quote of Ephraim of Arizona above.

Accepting - truly accepting - criticism requires the sort of humility that I can only grasp at times.  It requires the ability to listen without judgement, accept the truth without defense, and then act on the criticism.  It is incredibly hard to do when I am invested in my own correctness or the incorrectness of the source or just the source indeed (how many times have I received useful criticism from people I may have had problems with!).  It means being willing and ready, at all times, to set aside practices and beliefs that I may have had for years or decades.

Not all criticism is the same, of course.  There is criticism for doing the right thing or unreasonable criticism for not being everything someone else expects; this can (and should) be easily ignored.  But too often I confuse the two, letting my opinion of the other or the situation exclude the point that I am being told something about myself that I can better.

If, as the Geronda suggests, agitation about the criticism is a measure of my ego, then I still have a very long way to go.