At The Water's Edge
Criticism Of Others
A friend once said I was fragile, brittle in temperament. Ironically, we’ve since fallen out for the very reason that I think he’s unswerving, never wrong and inflexible, doesn’t take anything on board, doesn’t listen, i.e. the very things that he accused me of. A while back I suggested to the same friend that he always seemed to have his “foot to the floor”, that he is always going “flat out”. I can see recently that I’ve been doing the very same (a behaviour in myself that I call “motoring”).
Another friend fell out with one of his friends because he always seemed to dominate the conversation all of the time, he always wanted to talk about himself. To suggest that my friend was the same would probably have started World War 3. The fact that I wanted to suggest it to my friend of course is irrelevant (:-)
It’s almost as if the things that we accuse others of, the criticisms that we put on others offer clues to how we might actually improve ourselves. In fact, it is a little like shining a light on our “shadow” – those elements of ourselves, behaviours, that we can’t or don't want to “see”.
Karen Kingston in Clear Your Clutter writes: "The greatest critics are those who deep down believe, for whatever reason, that they themselves are not good enough."
To say that I have a LOT to learn in this regard is an understatement.
