Fairy Chess

One of the toughest struggles in life can be to take criticism. I don't mean to say "hey everybody, criticize me now," but if I have the right attitude, I'm supposed to be open to improvement. After all, the inverted life can't be lived alone, and the inverted life can't be lived without access to important information. If both these things are true, then something has to give.

Again, I'm not asking to be bombarded (though if you want to put a comment on this thing, I won't get in your way) with criticism. I'm not openly inviting it. Instead, I am trying to focus my mind on my activities and to ask: "if it comes to criticism, what will this activity get?" Even things that might get a lot of criticism may still be worth doing.

It is important to us that our voices are heard in areas like customer feedback. We all want to voice our opinions in politics, and we vote accordingly. All these are forms of criticism. Ideally, it would all be constructive, but in real life, criticism ranges from a fifty-fifty split, to being mostly negative. But it doesn't have to be that way.

Remaining open to criticism will not be easy, but I believe it helped me quell impulses I once had no control over. It added one extra inhibition--if I ask how others might view an action, it adjusts how I myself see the same action.

I remember noticing the change in the middle of July 2006 at work. The computer wasn't working quite the way it should. I was about to react, when a question crossed the back of my mind: "Am I really as angry as I think I am?" The reaction I made was much smaller, and far less of an outburst, and that buildup of frustration vented without it showing to others.

That was only part of it. People at work who remembered all the curses and bad words I used to say--especially when computers broke down and destroyed my work--stopped seeing me the same way. In August or September last year, when I was hearing criticism, I asked a co-worker: "can you remember how many bad words I've said since last month?" The expression on his face changed. He admitted that he hadn't heard the usual string of phrases from me when the computers messed up my work.

I leave you with a verse: "Flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart" (2 Timothy 2:22).