Being critical is believed to be one of the most fascinating traits of one’s personality. It not only helps you to think about concepts with a whole new perspective, but also helps you to sound smart. Believe it or not, if you are critical in your approach, people will appreciate you.
Try criticising an important person of their field, and see how you would be given much more attention and at a surprise people may even start comparing you to that person. The art of criticism is often used as a weapon in many political speeches and statements, where a regular person criticises a person at high position, just to gain some attention. It seems that we live in an era, where we are ruled by the critics.
The irony of our world is that,
Appreciation is usually criticised,
While Criticism is always appreciated
But this is not making us any better. Trying to find faults is all we do to evaluate something. There is something wrong in this approach. Let me show you; how!!
Once I was travelling to a hill station in a bus. The bus was half filled. It was going to be a long journey. So I tried to occupy a window seat (It helps you pass time as well as you can get a support of the window while sleeping). I looked outside and saw some trees, a dusty river, some mountains and farms thinking of how urbanisation has not hit many places making them uncivilised. While thinking this I fall asleep resting my head onto the window.
Suddenly, my sleep was interrupted by some voice of a girl, screaming “Grandpa!!! Look the Trees are running back and so are mountains. Farms are so fresh, like you told me. And see, those birds, they can fly. And look the water is trying to outrun us. It is so beautiful, so lovely. Mother Nature has blessed this place.”
My sleep was getting disturbed. But somehow I was finding it fascinating. I rose and tried to figure out, where the voice was coming from. I reached the source of sound and saw that it was a teenage girl sitting next to an old man, facing towards window, she was referring to as her grandpa. I noticed that she was wearing black glasses.
Suddenly the man turned back to me and then returning back to the girl and said in a calm tone, “Lily!! I told you not to shout. Look you are disturbing others.” “No, No its OK. I rather found her perspective fascinating, the way she observes the things is unique”, I said. The man laughed and said the words, which made me reconsider my way to observe things.
His words were, “The girl was born blind. She was abandoned by his parents. Since then I take care of her. She has just got operated and got her eyesight. She is excited and amazed to see all this.”
I looked at the girl, smiled and returned to my seat. I covered my whole journey thinking, how a girl who just got her eyesight could see and appreciate the things which I thought were the lack of urbanisation. How we have stopped appreciating things and taken them for granted now. How everyone just tries to make things better by criticising them and totally forgets to appreciate the actual cause for its existence.
This might seem to be a small thing, but it may lead you to some serious questions. It seems that not appreciating something, totally creates a negative image of it. For Instance, not appreciating trees for their benefits, leads to deforestation; not appreciating someone’s hard work, especially if it’s an artwork, may lead you to not understanding it and to the worst case scenario, not appreciating your wife’s cooking on your anniversary may lead to divorce.
So should we just appreciate the things and stop criticising?? No, Criticism is good for its own reasons, which we are fully aware of. But appreciation is also important.
Today, in order to make world a better place, we should wait and look if we can appreciate things. Not everything can be appreciated. Somethings need to be criticised heavily. But the bottom line is,
Amidst our busy schedules, we should stop, look around and try to appreciate things for what they are. Trust me, you might become a positive person and end up bringing smiles to many faces.
