The Beauty and Paradox of Criticisms

By Ogiri John Ogiri 

The man who is married to a very beautiful maiden and the one who has a beautiful orchard of mangoes by the road have the same problem. Every passer-by must be attracted to take a bite of their succulent fruits. To eliminate this problem, two choices can be made by the men. The first can divorce his wife while the second can cut down his orchard. This may amount to sheer cowardice and lack of initiative to turn a threat into opportunities for creative growth. So, what both men can do is to convert the threat to creative opportunities for growth. If the woman was not beautiful, no one would look at her. If the orchard was not producing beautiful fruits, no body would want to throw stones at them either. That all these could happen means that two men were making progress. This is the dilemma of a man or woman who wants to make progress. Such a person should court criticisms and become her friend.

The truth is that, criticisms are thrown at us when we are succeeding, not when we are failing. 

So be kind to a good critic and sympathise with a bad one. There is no need to fret over criticisms. 

However, any criticism without a solution has suffered a major deficiency in constructive engagement. If this is the case, then it becomes a serious act of mischief emanating from wicked envy. Every genuine criticism should be accompanied by some hard but helpful solutions for such is the end which it seeks to achieve, that is, to help a situation become better as well as assist the leader of an office to become more effective and responsibly efficient.

 This is why we should give more attention to constructive criticisms and ignore the destructive ones. When we get destructive criticisms from people, it is best to ignore and be silent on them.

I have learned over the years that, silence is a subtle weapon dreaded by many. When people don't know what you're up to, they become afraid of your next move. At this stage, you become a mystery they want to unravel. That puts you in control. Sometimes, silence is the best weapon against the treachery of the proud and the dangerous exploits of messengers of gloom and doom.

But we should be careful not to excuse our failures or blame it on others regardless of whatever criticisms we face. One thing we fail to understand is this, at the heart of every blame we apportion to others for our failures is a yearning to feel better. In other words, to escape the lynching of our conscience, we hold others to account for our obvious under-achievements and failures so that we can feel better. But we can accept the blame and still have the best feeling. I wish we knew that accepting responsibility for our failures can help us turn our situations around for the better and move on to achieve more.

Stop blaming people when you fail. Blame yourself. Blaming people won't help us succeed more. Take responsibility and you will achieve greater things.

While bad criticisms may be a spoiler, good, helpful criticisms have the advantage of spurring us on to taking responsibility and doing things right and well.