Did you ever find yourself feeling so critical, you wonder if maybe it's you that's the issue, not the rest of the world? I'm someone who always thought of myself as lesser. If the world was a story, I was never the main character. Happily, I graduated college with a new sense of self-respect. I found I was actually quite a good person, that I do have some talents after all (even ones I was selling myself majorly short on), and that I held respectable values.
Now I find myself being constantly critical. It's hard to tell if I'm justified in being so, or if my new sense of self-respect is causing me to place too much judgment on others. I'm not consciously doing either. I know that as much as I am drinking in good values and habits from those around me, there are also plenty of things I see that I don't like and don't respect. It's difficult to find a balance between what deserves being thought about critically and what ought to be understood and ignored. I don't know if this is coming from actually respecting my values as opposed to those of other people or if I am getting an inflated ego that likes to find fault with things that are not myself. Either way, I find the way I feel disturbing and wish I did not feel so. It's probably not smart to write all of this in a blog post, but I'm not sure what else to do.
I know the world is not Candyland. But it must be easier to control your own thoughts and feelings than this?
If I write something... will you think it's poor stuff?
ReplyDeleteI think you'll probably even out, if only because you want to. Or else you'll become a cynic. It's not too bad.
I can relate to what you've written. given I've had a bit of critical side myself. Check out my post about this sort of negative attitude, and how to control it here: http://walkingthegreyline.blogspot.com/2009/10/character-traits.html
ReplyDeleteI went through a fairly rough phase of this in high school as I was becoming more religious and found most everything (and everyone around me) worth criticizing. It is true that there is a lot in the world that is imperfect, and even those around us have individual challenges and failings that can really grate our nerves... but I do think that it all depends on perspective, and selective filtering to not allow these sometimes overt elements to bug us so much.
I heard an important idea from Rav Tendler during our Bio-ethics class which he made as part of his introduction on why we need to understand the perspectives that are opposite to ours in these touchy, ethical issues. Even though we may know that the other person is entirely wrong, and believe that with all our heart, nevertheless, the fact that an intelligent, thinking person has that other perspective requires us to do our best to understand and respect their individuality in that area. You don't have to agree, but it isn't right to treat them in a negative fashion. Civility is the key.