Criticize, It Will Feel Better

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

“The street writhes, tongueless,

She has nothing to shout and talk with."

V. V. Mayakovsky

There are such professions where a person does not need to say anything important out loud. Such, you know, silent ones, stand at the machine, grind out the details, well, perhaps you can express your displeasure aloud, both in print and "unprintable", but in general, the machine does not care about your opinion, and even your displeasure. And there are professions where a person is most often, so to speak, "on the front line", publicly expresses his opinion on this or that occasion, or does something creative, which, again, will be shown publicly - writes poetry or prose, writes pictures, puts on performances, cross-stitches, runs a culinary blog on Youtube, writes reviews of films or books, choose your option. The main thing is that in such professions there is always a combination of two factors: the desire (I can even call it a need) to reasonably express my opinion or myself, through my work, and a rather high level of vulnerability, since, to quote the classic: "Anyone can offend an artist" … Therefore, a comparison with military operations comes to my mind - you are either ready to come forward, realizing that you are putting yourself in danger, or by all means trying to "sit out" in the rear.

Immediately I will make a reservation that I will talk about people who have chosen the first path, the path of creativity, consciously, not out of a desire to prove or impose something on someone, not from the Ego, but precisely because there is their inner need for it, inner Call, I would call it that. It is important for these people to express what is inside, not because they love publicity so much, but because what passes through them, the flow of creative information, simply must be expressed. If you ask such a person why he needs it - for example, to paint pictures - he will answer you that “he cannot but paint,” and this is true. He might want to sit in a corner and not do anything like that, but he cannot, because something inside him will not calm down until the picture is written, the play is staged, and the poems are printed. On these grounds it is quite easy to distinguish a “fashion blogger”, inside of whom the traumatized ego screams with all his might: “Notice me! Hear me! I am the smartest! I know everything better than anyone! " from a truly creative person who is quite decently "tossed" inside from despair to ecstasy, but he still goes and does what is important for him to do. For the people I am talking about, the emphasis is always not on themselves, but on the information or energy that passes through them. Such a person clearly realizes that he is just a conductor of something greater than himself, just a channel through which creativity passes from somewhere - from the Cosmos, from the Universe, from the noosphere, from somewhere above, so to speak, into human society. Such, you know, a translator, from “divine” to “human”.

And so our "creative man" did what his inner intention told him to do, and shared it with the world. Now guess three times what he will have to face almost immediately after the "world" saw his creation? That's right, with criticism. With misunderstanding, rejection and devaluation. Moreover, criticism can also come from close people, and he is completely unfamiliar, who are very concerned about "that someone is wrong on the Internet." My question for this article will be the following - what inner motivation drives people who seek to criticize others? Why do they need it and what does it give them?

My reflections led me to three reasons, which will be outlined below.

1. Option one: "You have a mistake here and in general you annoy me."

For example, let's take a written article, or a story, or just a post on social networks. It doesn't matter what he's talking about: how to make lazy cabbage rolls, how the author of the article has been living on a yacht for five years, about meditation, about some personal experience, everything will do. Our critical reader starts reading, and then something offends him. Maybe the comma is not there, or, God forbid, there is a spelling mistake, or you just don’t like how the author of the phrase builds it, or - attention! - the article is too long, one touch on the phone screen does not scroll. Indignation boils inside the reader, and he immediately comments, expressing his dissatisfaction, accuses the author of illiteracy, shortsightedness, stupidity, ignorance of the subject or verbosity, because the reader does not have time to read something consisting of more than three paragraphs, because he still has to criticize someone! The phrase of the commentary “The article is too long, I don’t have time to read it” is my favorite. There is no time to finish reading, but to write a comment that there is no time, there is time? Delightful! You can also immediately switch to the personality of the author, who dared to "state" something there, because there are all the prerequisites for this: an article about alcohol / homosexuality / unhappy love? Well, here it is a no brainer that the author is an alcoholic, homosexual, unhappy in love! It is obvious!

At this point, it is necessary to emphasize that the reader did not finish reading the text of the article or post, and what exactly the author said / wanted to say, he does not know, and that is not why the reader started reading at all! Reading, as such, has nothing to do with it, which is why I pointed out at the very beginning that the topic of the article is unimportant, it is the motivation of the reader to find something on which (towards what) it will be convenient for him to merge his inner negativity. This is the mood, you know, to go out and punch someone in the face just because they have black boots. Or brown. Or yellow. Or sneakers, in general!

Such people live with constant internal aggression, hiding it in those cases when they are dealing with someone stronger than themselves or higher in status, and letting it out if, in the person's opinion, “nothing will happen to him” for it. This is akin to yelling at a child, knowing that he will not be able to answer, to kick a stray dog on the street, because he will not be able to fight back, to get nasty on a grandmother on a trolley bus - for the same reason. I would call it "little man syndrome." Somewhere inside there is a feeling that I deserve more, better, and everyone offends me and scrapes me from the trough, and this insult eats away from the inside so much that either in a loop or on the Internet, criticize. “After all, I deserve it,” as they say. If we look at the desire to “criticize” from the point of view of coaching, in this case I would ask the person to think about what exactly does not suit him so much in his own life that he sees no other way but to attack - in this case verbally - anyone who gets in his way. What is it - fear, pride, unworthiness?

2. Option two: "I know better how dare you contradict me."

This category of people who read the article / post, but disagree from the point of view of the author, for some reason. The reason is also not very important, in fact - maybe the author writes about art, but the reader listened to a couple of courses of lectures on art history, and nothing that the author wrote about was not said in these courses of lectures. No, no, it is absolutely unrealistic to admit the thought that perhaps the author understands a little more in art than the one who read the course of lectures, because then this would mean that the course of lectures was listened to in vain, and in fact for him also I had to pay! Or the author writes about medicine, about the latest achievements, and the reader studied at a medical university 30 years ago, and "they were not told that." Or an article on modern grammar of the English language, written by a bilingual living in an English-speaking environment, and the reader would very much like to speak English fluently, but he has only the textbook “English for Humanities. The 1976 edition”, and at school he was taught to say something like“Zys from the table”, which he is very proud of. Of course, he cannot allow some "upstart on the Internet" to convince him that the question "How to get to the library?" it is impossible to answer with the phrase "Zys from e table"! The reader, obviously, knows better, he went to school! Yes, on this phrase, maybe all his self-esteem is built, and you here show him an "alternative reality"! This cannot be, "because it can never be" - remember the classic? What is here - again, Ego, inflexibility of thinking, the impossibility not even to "accept" someone else's point of view, we do not even want to hear it, because it immediately rises across our throats. Conservatism is our everything, if in our general store artichokes are not sold, then they do not exist, period. Such readers, most often, require documentary / scientific evidence, links to sources, are interested in whether the author has a specialized education in order to talk about what he is talking about and generally cling to the handrail called: “You are young, here live with mine, you will find out. " How, you do not have state awards in literature and allow yourself to write some stories there? Unheard of insolence, my dear sir, unheard of! The funny thing in this case is that people who really understand the subject, and the article / post have read, most likely, will find it / him useful from the point of view of "looking from a different angle", and will not comment on anything. What for? After all, the author personally did nothing wrong with them, and the opinion, as one close relative of mine says, “is almost like a priest - everyone has.”

3. Option three. "Please do not speak nicely."

Here I will return to the concepts of "creativity", "self-expression" and to Mayakovsky. There is such a children's anecdote. Children sit in the sandbox and talk about what their parents gave each of them for the holiday. Masha boasts that she was presented with a dress, Kolya with a toy railway, Seryozha with a remote-controlled helicopter. When it comes to Viti's turn, he gets up and says: “And I … And for me … And for me …. Now I will give you all! " and runs away in tears. Well, they didn’t give him anything, and there’s nothing to say, only the insult remained.

According to my observations, as a "practical esoteric", people who allowed themselves to express themselves through this or that creativity - and there are many options, in fact, no one said that creativity is strictly "artist, actor, dancer", you can, for example, preparing a new dish every day, or growing unusual flowers on the windowsill - are much happier and more stable in their lives. Moreover, I am sure that if more people allowed themselves to express themselves through creativity, then there would be more acceptance - both of themselves and those around, and inner harmony always leads to external harmony, because what came out of you, and will return to you.

Allow your inner Creator to manifest and you yourself will feel the changes in your life.

As Krishna said, "think about it,"

Yours, #anyafincham