It’s a strange world. We humans love to criticize. Some of us are more tolerant than others but I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone who didn’t get in a few digs once in a while.

And, learning to deal with criticism can be tough. Personality has a big role to play: some people are just more sensitive to criticism than others — or they think they are. But it’s possible that remaining sensitive about criticism is a function of learning about criticism when we are young (or old), and realizing that criticism is just a part of life that needs dealing with.

Personally, I think Steinbeck stole the expression from many, many, other people who went before him by multiple centuries. But it’s a great quote and worth a moment’s consideration.

Certainly parents are our first experience with criticism — and as there is infinite variation in parenting style there are extremes in how frequently and how severely we are met with criticism. Whether our parents themselves are happy with their life, with their accomplishments, the government, their jobs, you name it — will impact heavily on how much, how often, how loudly, for forcefully they voice their criticisms. And then there are the silent ciriticms — glances, turned backs, nagging, laughter.

Not to be ignored there is the whole world of parents who want to rule their children’s lives. A parent’s idea of HOW a life should be lived, of WHO their child should marry, of WHAT sort of job they should have, of WHY they should behave in various ways — many a parent has tried to live a child’s life for them and their criticism is less about the child than it is about their own inferiority, unhappiness, or frustrations.

Through our school years we experience other people criticizing us. Lessons learned, or unlearned, subjects we excel in or hate — there is an entire litany of reasons students find themselves criticized. Fortunately, it seemed to me, most of the school age criticism had to do with the subject — and not as much about peers or competition, but as we age out of school into the workplace those influences come into greater focus.

And of course criticism in the workplace — which often manifests as wage control, promotion denial, etc — and often has absolutely nothing to do with an individual’s performance and more to do with peers, gossip, world market pressures, and the social system we live in — democracy, capitalism, monarchy, depression, inflation, etc., etc., etc..

Sadly, in the world we live in, even mediocrity will merit criticism. The fact is that people simply like to criticize others because — in part — it makes them feel good about themselves — in the sense that they can feel superior. Of course, whether they ARE superior is never questioned. Anyone can criticize and whether there is legitimate reason to point out any supposed failure seems never to be given consideration. You can be criticized just because someone woke up on the “wrong side of the bed” and for nothing you have done.

The only thing that will help is your own esteem for yourself. If you are timid, uncertain, skittish, of low self esteem the criticism can cut deeply. Parents who didn’t help you build your self esteem to withstand the normal experiences of life are certainly to blame but even if that happens to be the case they aren’t living your life and you need your own mechanisms for dealing with the critical gripe.

Anger, frustration, and sadness won’t help even one bit. It really comes down to realizing that criticism is a part of our imperfect life and that you will never be away from it and just like the proverbial “water off a duck’s back” we need to learn that criticism is no more than water on our back. If it’s raining a hoolie outside we’re gonna get soaked — and sometimes in life criticism seems never ending. But just like getting caught in a downpour we aren’t any the worse for wear — other than needing to dry off and “drying off” from criticism is nothing more than getting some time away for yourself and your own thoughts — to rebuild your strategy, your skills, your smile, whatever it was that brought the criticism in the first place so that you can set out the next day or the next hour or the next job with renewed energy and determination.

Criticism is part of life. We all get it. We all have to deal with it. HOW we choose to do that is entirely up to us. If we choose successful tactics life gets easier. If life is getting HARDER instead, maybe we need to reexamine our responses until we find something that works. The world isn’t going to change, it’s up to us to change. To adapt.

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That’s enough for today. I’ll be back tomorrow to chat once more. :-)

Take care of yourself and your loved ones.

Yesterday I was thinking about traditions. But let’s shift focus a bit.

I wonder how many of us realize just how quickly our brain functions — and you might just as well read that as — how quickly our brain jumps ahead of us!!!!!!

The graphic above is the perfect illustration of what I mean. We don’t have to wait for everything to be written out, or spoken, for our brain to “think” that it knows what’s coming. A few lines on a page and from random lines our brain constructs meaning, or fiction, fact or fallacy.

There is no way to stop the intelligence within us from doing such things — but it’s a helpful life skill if we become aware, and keep ourselves aware of the fact that our brain doesn’t always wait on us to intelligently process what it has witnessed before making up our mind.

In legal settings, in social settings, between partners, we do this all the time. And that’s not even talking about the times that we see something and decide “that’s not for me,” and do something we were warned against.

Brains are tricky little buggers. It’s as if they have a mind of their own. Perhaps if we were raised as “law abiding” citizens we might have a different level of control over what conclusions our brain jumps to — but maybe not. Sometimes we just want to be bad, or we just want to be different.

Recently, I was struck by this quotation, that when we don’t want to be interesting — or don’t want to have other people value us — then we are free to be, think, act, as we choose. There’s an Old Testament verse that speaks to this same idea: “where there is no vision, the people cast off restraint” (Proverbs 29:18).

If there are no rules people will do whatever they want. Some choosing actions that are beneficial to themselves and others, some choosing actions that cause problems for others and for themselves, and some acting in ways that actually end their lives — and/or the lives of others — for reason, or for lack of reason.

Yeah — we see what we want to see. Would that more people wanted to see beauty in the world.

Take care for the day and I”ll chat again tomorrow. (and some day I’ll stop hitting the double quote key instead of the apostrophe key.). :-)

Our great grandson turned 4 years old a week ago. Our granddaughter married into a big, big, big family and she was saying she’s never known a kid have so many 4th birthday parties before.

Somehow that reminded of his baptism. It seems that the baptismal clothes he wore had been worn by 67 previous family members for THEIR baptisms! Now, being an only child, having fathered an only child I have to admit that LARGE FAMILY life is totally foreign to me. I give the granddaughter heaps of credit for coping with a family that does everything together even when spread over 1/2 a continent. There are so many family gatherings one might be tempted to think they alone were responsible for greenhouse emissions, but you know that’s not true. And if my joking about it gives away my bewilderment about how you deal with so many people who want so much of your time you’re right: I’m totally clueless.

But 67 wearers of one costume is an aspect of tradition that I had little considered. And the fact that the family has kept track of all the people baptised in that outfit is even more curious. James’ father was one of them. So, I guess it’s close enough to home for it to be nostalgic to him. “The first dress I ever wore” is how he puts it!

As a parallel line of thought we see parades — Memorial Day, Independence Day, European communities that have their abundance of Saints’ day parades, etc… And I am reminded that traditions aren’t just traditions. They are the source of group pride. Whether it’s national, religious, family, or sectarian — people who repeatedly practice rituals achieve a group mindedness that can be good, or it can be the source of great evil.

Traditions are also the incubators of pride — group pride — of being part of something valuable (to the adherents) whether it is valuable to anyone else or not. Nations have traditions and pride. Take the Alsace region of France/Germany — it has been fought over repeatedly and way too many soldiers and civilians have lost their lives and livelihoods defending or retaking their homeland. Indeed, what we see in Palestine and the horrors inflicted upon those people by the Jewish State only serves to remind us that “pride” can get any of us into a lot of trouble. Racially, sexually, politically, nationally: pride causes a lot of problems — and it all starts with very simple, very basic traditions.

I’m sure I’m part of my share of traditions. I don’t like to think about them, and my family knows that I take holidays slightly differently than most of them do. And whether traditions are universally good or bad isn’t the question. They are a part of the way we humans cope with life, with separation, with physical and biological needs, etc.. But that being the case does not mean that we ought to embrace every opportunity to celebrate anything that happens.

If we humans weren’t so quick to add alcohol to our celebrations it might be a different story. It seems as if there is such a terrific sense that we need to escape our day-to-day regular lives and a little bit of alcohol smooths the way to Escape Town. Combine a long standing tradition with a need to escape and a little liquid encouragement and the number of belligerent conversations and confrontations that can take place multiply rapidly. And with them all manner of extensions of our traditions to violence.

There is no cure. Traditions will continue. Pride will rise and pride will fall. And we’ll all wonder about why we got ourselves into this mess, or that mess, or some other mess. But nothing arises without a seed. Everything has a starting point. The starting point may be very innocent — just like a baptismal gown — but the ends sometimes prove to be very different from the beginnings and we shrug our shoulders wondering what went wrong.

That’s it for today. Take care of yourself and yours. I’ll be back tomorrow for another chat.

We’re actually a couple days into June and I love this time of year. The plants are coming round, The birds are enjoying the new birdbath. Life is good.

It’s the time of year when we usually take a few day trips to state parks. Seeing as our tent and trailer camping days are over we supplement our wander lust with simpler jaunts. This year we have done fewer than usual but still getting out among the creepy crawlies and the birds and frogs does us good. We do have a place near the Wisconsin Dells that we love to spend time at, but our medical and other schedule has kept us from doing so. So we get our joy where we can.

Our upstairs tenant was going to build a raised bed in the backyard, but nothing has transpired on that front — to date. My planted wildflower seeds haven’t done anything yet. Perhaps the overnight temps have ben too low. We’ll see. Peg has been on a mulch kick this year, and we seem to keep making more trips to the garden center for more bags of the stuff.

We did get a bit energetic and put some 80 landscaping stones along the neighbor’s fence when we did that rototilling a couple weeks ago. Lots of weight and hard work but we had no need to rush and we’re happy with the little changes that make the place look more lived in. When we first moved here it appeared to my eyes to be too sterile and untouched. The lawn was perfectly manicured and weed free — which I can’t say now — but everything else was just too prim and proper. It’s starting to look more like home to me.

Being unable to get down on hands and knees because of a whopping big abrasion on one knee that is still healing I’ve been standing back just LOOKING at things for half a week now and I’m not sure whether new ideas have begun to sprout. Have to see how that all works out.

Our rose bushes are almost looking like it’s June — the big month in Milwaukee for rose blooms. One is just a couple days from breaking into color, the other bush at the front of the house which. is new (planted last year) is still building roots and structure but it’s looking good for just that long in the ground.

And that’s about it for today’s update. Check back again tomorrow and we’ll see what’s on my mind. :-)