Forgiving Ms. Critic
“We come to love not by finding a perfect person but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.” - Sam Keen
I found the above quote not in Sam Keen’s To Love and Be Loved, but in Arvid Sharma’s Gandhi: A Spiritual Biography, in a passage talking about Gandhi’s views on the “inextricably bound” relationship between love and suffering. The quote got me thinking about the most obvious connection first – my marriage. But later on, I began thinking about how I could love myself more deeply, and learn to forgive my own misgivings and imperfections.
Sometimes stereotypes are born in truth, and there is no doubt I am a “sensitive artist.” In the past I’ve wondered, how can I be confident enough to put a blog post into the universe, and still contain so much self-loathing? But Gandhi’s perspective on love helps me understand what at first looks like a contradiction. With love, beauty, and creation, comes attachment, which inherently leads to suffering. As an artist, I want nothing more than to delight you, surprise you, and intrigue your mind. But my desire is not wholly selfless. I want to give you a gift, but I also want you, need you, to like it. My ego is like the worst of American consumers; it feeds on your clicks, your interest.
Classmates at my junior critique in college would’ve seen the tears welling in my eyes after one professor made the endearing comment that one painting “looked like someone trying to cheaply imitate what they think a painting should be like.”[1] Now, I’m 99% percent sure this professor no longer has any recollection of making this comment, but I will remember it for the rest of my life. And whether I felt his statement was true or not is really irrelevant. There is a Krista Tippett quote that feels particularly apt here: “You can disagree with another person’s opinions. You can disagree with their doctrines. You can’t disagree with their experience.” In this case I felt I had failed my audience. I had spent countless hours developing a piece that did not offer this professor the intended viewing experience.
I often remember my biggest failures much more vividly than any of my successes. In fact, I do not recall a single positive comment from that junior critique, though I’m sure there were a few. I remember every Capoeira Roda where I’ve been kicked in the head. I vividly remember the first time I taught a particularly difficult group of first graders – the image of myself hollering while kids threw crayons and chased each other around the room. My failures stay sticky like maple syrup. I can never seem to let them go.
It was Richard Halloway’s On Forgiveness that got me meditating on the notion of forgiveness, and of forgiving myself. My first instinct was to suppress my inner critic, the most vocal and unforgiving mental narrator. But this tendency quickly became more damaging then helpful. Whenever I began to have negative thoughts about myself, my response would then be, “You shouldn’t think that way! You need to be nicer to yourself! Stop bringing yourself down!” From the outside maybe this sounds like a pep talk – but inside it became a vicious cycle of perpetually dissecting my own inadequacies and failures; first my having failed at something, then me thinking about the failure, then me thinking about how I shouldn’t be thinking about my own failure, and on and on.
Then I came upon a new idea. What if I viewed not just my whole self as the imperfect lover I needed to see perfectly – what if I came to love my inner critic, the Simon Cowell, the Howard Buchwald of my consciousness?
Once I began examining this voice more closely, I realized that my inner Ms. Critic is very misunderstood. The self-help books had gotten her all wrong! In fact, she has a lot of redeemable qualities. Her quest for perfection, though futile, has made me an extremely reflective person and a fast learner. She is not a naysayer, but a problem solver. She is the reason I self-educate, the reason I push myself. She is the voice that despairs and weeps when I have fallen but she is also the one that tells me to get the hell back up and do it over, try again. There are times I may need to keep her in check, but her criticism is there to keep me balanced, to humble me, to remind me that I can always do more and always be better.
Slowly but surely I am learning not just to accept that Ms. Critic will always be around, but actually love her and be thankful for her. I don’t deny her imperfections, but against the contributions she has made toward my progress, they aren’t so bad.
Have you learned to love your own internal critic? Or has it gotten the best of you? If you have any stories, comments or questions, please share them below.
[1] Pratt Alumns – I know what you’re thinking, but actually it was not Howard Buchwald who said this! This comment came from a very kind and talented drawing professor who also happens to be the only teacher to give me a C in college.