When I was in college it was almost palpable. Of course, in that environment, you can hardly be in any single class without a handful of cynics being in there with you. Admittedly, I was one of them. I would scrutinize things that people said and did. Even good things were under the microscope to spot their true intentions. It wasn’t entirely intentional, but I became quite the cynic.
It’s ok for me to confess this all to you because I feel like I’m essentially at an AA meeting. Perhaps it’s Critics Anonymous for us, but it is us after all, isn’t it?
If the shoe doesn’t fit, then disregard what I’m saying here. That’s fine. But I think many of us tend to struggle with being critical. Especially if we tend to be perfectionistic or strive for excellence, it almost seems to come with the territory. In wanting what’s best you need to spot what is not the best and why it isn’t the best.
However, all of this comes at a cost.
It reminds me of the Oscar Wilde quote where he asks, “What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” His point is that when we become the cynic we begin to know the cost of things but not their value. We know that people invested into something but we start losing sight of the value of the people behind the product.
We can cynically look at a politician, without recognizing our own fallenness and without acknowledging that we don’t fully understand all that they have to do. We can cynically look at the homeless beggar, without knowing their story of how they got there and reminding ourselves they were once a little boy or girl like we were. We can cynically look at a boss, without realizing that with their position comes responsibilities we may not realize and without acknowledging that we probably don’t do our job perfectly either. We have the ability to cynically look at anyone or anything, without recognizing the value of it and without acknowledging that we only see part of the picture.
And the cost of our cynicism is our humanness. It extracts our generosity and compassion. It eats away at our ability to be empathetic and to love the people who are both our friends as well as our enemies. It causes us to be judges in the competition rather than teammates, spectators rather than engagers.
When we become steeped in cynicism we are allowing ourselves to quietly believe that our critical looks at that person, project, or thing are in some way for the better. That we’re choosing to look at things in a fair way. But are we really? Are we really using our gifts to the greatest good if we merely spot the problems rather than getting our hands dirty in solving them?
I leave you with this popular quote of Theodore Roosevelt’s. May it challenge you to be one who participates and seeks to find value rather than faults!
It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.