“Criticism may
not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in
the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.”
Winston
Churchill
Just a heads up, this is
straight to my children. You can keep
reading if you would like, but I offer little wisdom and less encouragement in
writing than I do when I parent.
That being said…
In history, the critic has
been around and has taken different names in its existence. The satirist, cartoonist, political
opposition and many other manifestations come about when dissention is pushed
against the received mode of operations.
It some respects, these individuals are whiny, bratty, needy, annoying,
know it all arrogant gas bags with little to no ability to think beyond what
they perceive as a reality that was taught to them or enlightened upon them by
someone else’s hard work and study.
And here is the hard part,
at any one point in your existence you will be one of these people.
You will think you have
something so figured out and so mastered that the very idea that someone may
know more than you or someone may have a better understanding will never even
enter your mind while you ramble off how much you think you understand.
If I can offer a piece of
advice to help alleviate the horrible misunderstanding that you think you are
hyper intelligent, accept this:
You aren’t.
Criticism is a tool, a
necessary one. On your first performance review from your boss, you will see
why. But criticism that come from
critical thinking, is the end game you need to reach.
Learn from everyone. Criticism, in its wrongness, sometime stems from
the assumption that you know the rightness of what you’re doing. And you may very well be right, you may be
the gold star test taker that does have the answer but that doesn’t mean you
aren’t able to learn MORE of something, from someone else who may have had
different experiences from you. Instead,
if you are going to offer your mouth and opinion come at it from a caring
attitude.
“He has a right
to criticize, who has a heart to help.” Abraham Lincoln
One
of my greatest pet peeves in Christianity is with the accepted idiocy level I
see with some people. No other place
have I seen a group of people so eager to not take thoughts and ideas and
studies to a deeper level. If I hear
“put it on the bottom shelf so others can reach it” one more time I will tear
up my copy of “Thinking as a Hobby” by Golding.
This enables people to not study.
You can’t hand something to people constantly and expect them to then
think for themselves, ever. They are
happy to take spoken word to them as accurate and do no research on their
own. There is a bible verse that says
“Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be
ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” Did you see
that? You need to study. And I mean study. Be a student.
Humble yourself to a level of thinking that you need books in front of
you with a notepad and pen. Write down
thoughts while reading, questions you may have on things that make sense and
chain to other ideas you have about the same topic, or write down what you
disagree with about the topic. Learn
about it as many ways as you can while you are of the understanding that you
don’t know everything. And learn, and
re-learn. Allow yourself the possibility
that what you are learning may be the wrong way to look at it. Allow that view to be wiped away and
rebuilt. Have no shame in being
wrong. We all are wrong. We all make mistakes and we all appear
idiotic at some point. You are human,
get over yourself.
Here is the problem we are warned with
studying though, it builds up knowledge, and that is where you have to be
careful.
With
any subject, gaining an understanding will increase knowledge and with that can
come a puffed up attitude. This is where
people get stuck. As with learning something,
there may be the false assumption that you have all the understanding you need
and you require no other input. This is
false. When you learn something, it
should constantly be assessed, refined, examined, questioned and settled
upon. Only when you have a full
understanding of a subject can you confidently say to any doubt or circumstance
that may challenge it “Come, and let us discover this again”.
“Criticism, like
rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man's growth without destroying his
roots.” Frank A. Clark
Your
quest to learn something should be matched with the necessary desire to teach
it to others. To spread the
understanding and to do so in a way that makes the knowledge available to
everyone, but most importantly to your children. Don’t leave the world with potential idiots. Teach and train your kids as I have you. And when teaching others, if you spot the
pride of all-knowingness, remember, you have that too. The quickest way to subvert this pride is
with wit. Never take yourself too
seriously. It impedes progress with
others who already think of you as a know-it-all. Trust me on this.
On
the flip side, learn to accept criticism. Let’s say this: Individuals today have a difficult
time communicating. For certain, there
are many ways that they communicate and discuss, but we have reduced the art of
conversation to simple text blurbs and status updates. When someone hears something contrary to
their own perceived viewpoint, it is rendered a personal attack as their
failure as an individual.
“We need very
strong ears to hear ourselves judged frankly, and because there are few who can
endure frank criticism without being stung by it, those who venture to
criticize us perform a remarkable act of friendship, for to undertake to wound
or offend a man for his own good is to have a healthy love for him.” Michel de Montaigne
There
is a time and place for your words.
Learn that. Keep in mind you are
ever the student, ever learning, ever humble.
You are prone to mistakes and epic moronic failures. Stay humble as you learn, and remember you
will always be learning.
But
don’t let idiots rule the day. If
something goes against what you have studied, and it is presented as fact, feel
free to question it, drill into it, and challenge the presenter with what you
understand already of the subject you have learned. If the first response you receive is “Why are
you so critical in questioning? Why do
you think you are so smart?” You do not
have a teacher in front of you, you have someone who reads a lesson to you out
of a book and is no better than a recording.
There are teachers in this world, find them, learn from them.
Exist
in your life with the view as quoted often “"IN
ESSENTIALS UNITY, IN NON-ESSENTIALS LIBERTY
Don’t question to argue, question to learn. Never stop learning. If someone is offended by your questions move
on, for you have learned all you can from them.
Operate from the position that some may know less than you, some
more than you, but that should never affect your desire to come to an
understanding of a subject in it’s completeness as it exists. Answers are there, but you must be critical
in your thinking and have a desire to find them.
As a Christian, we have an
available resource given to us that others do not. Use everything that is given to you, and you
will find your answers.
I promise you, there are
absolute truths in this world. There are
fundamental foundational truths that cannot be altered or argued with.
They just are.
And when critically thought
about enough, and given enough effort in learning about, criticism has no power
over them.
