Herrington: Friendship or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Criticism

Chris Herrington, Contributing Writer

     The whole point of having a friend is to have someone to talk to. Talking to someone needs to be a two-way street: Sometimes you talk, and sometimes you listen. What you are listening to may not make any difference at all, as long as you can relate with honesty and the freedom to speak your heart and mind. There may, though, be a thread of disagreement, entanglement, misunderstanding, cynicism, disregard, or criticism that is tough to put up with, and this can test a friendship to the breaking point.

     Some people seem to have a light hearted look at things, and we say they may be wearing “rose-colored glasses.” They may have a sort of naïve way of looking at things or be particularly optimistic about things. Some people will just simply brook no negativity at all. I had an aunt who was a wonderful soul, always positive, and when I was the least out of sorts, she would ask, “Honey, what’s wrong?” If things did not add up to happiness, there must be something out of kilter that needed to be righted.

     She had an uncanny way of adjusting the environment, tweaking the moment, recalibrating the knobs of life that would include some slight realignment, and we would be off and running. She was a fixer without her being someone who reprimanded or scolded. And she was a stickler for positive talk. One time my mother asked her about a movie we had seen, “Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang.” “Oh, I don’t know about that,” she noted, “but if you are going to talk like that you may need to leave.” Simple, but effective. She would clear out her kitchen at the least provocation, no squabbling for her.

     Some friends are the exact opposite of friendly. They can be mean spirited, have a dry sense of humor, be rather dark, make fun of others, just have some fun, or otherwise make you feel like you wish you did not know them. As the saying goes, “With friends like that, who needs enemies?”

     I write on-line, a lot. My daily word count is about 10,000 some days. That means that if I hit it for 200 days a year, I could easily knock out 2 million words. I don’t write every day, and some days I have to travel or sit with a friend or go to a movie or whatever, so I probably hit maybe 500,000 a year or close to it. That’s a lot of communicating, and I can’t say that every word is positive.

     I don’t like bullying, so I am likely to come to the aid of someone I see drowning on–line, even if I disagree with this person. I am a fair debater; I don’t always come out on top, but I am a flurry of activity waiting to happen, so when the occasion arises, I can muster an assault that is worthy of the moment. My deflection and decoding skills are pretty high, and when I see someone getting run over, I usually hover nearby like a dog waiting for table scraps. I don’t know what there is about my personality that even cares about that, but I feel like people ought to have a fighting chance.

     That being said, some people just can’t help stepping into it with both feet. People who can’t help it align themselves with the need to set everyone else straight. The town-crier of the set of children of an alcoholic fame is someone who needs the truth to be told because the parent would not admit to being an alcoholic. This person then has the life mission of being brutally honest about everyone else’s failings and faults. It’s the way they have interrupted the world, and this is their reality.

     If you hook up with one of these people, they will be revealing your every move to you for your own good. They will tell you what you know, outline the problems, go through the ain’t it awfuls, and circle the scratch on your Ferrari. Yes, without these people we might have lived in the delusion that we are perfect and that our lives are spotless examples of just how to be.

     But, into every life a little rain must fall. If you have not been given a hard time, you have not lived. You have to go through tough times so that you will appreciate the good times. You need to toughen up so that when you get out into the real world, it will not swallow you whole. You have to build some psychological muscles….Man, people have a lot of excuses for getting in your business and telling you what to do, don’t they?

     Studies have shown…really (http://www.amazon.com/Learned-Optimism-Change-Your-Mind/dp/0671019112), that if we are negative, pessimistic, when we are young, we will probably remain so for life. We can learn to be optimistic, but the cure is a maddening thing called being successful. Some people have the mindset that every time they open their mouths, try to do something, or attempt a change it only leads to disappointment and discouragement. They cannot get it through their thick skulls that everyone has one of those days. Everyone has a morning that starts out with everything turning sour and messed up and nothing will go right and it would be better to just go back to bed. The difference is that some people persevere and manage to get under it, over it, beyond it, or past it. Some people tend to just throw their hands in the air and give up, even though a successful moment was in the wings and only waiting for the clock to click 9 A.M.

     A hundred anythings in a row does not mean that there will be 101. You could make the case, but it would really just be circumstantial, and after a while the laws of probability would kick in. The chances that something else will mess up is so astronomically low that you are guaranteed to have a good day given your past activities, right?

     At any rate, the reality is that all of us need some straightening out. No one is wrong all the time, but a lot of us are wrong a lot it seems to a select few who go around with self-appointed pad to write us an Oops Ticket. It’s snowing down south, your slip is showing. Isn’t there always one person who notices this? She was in the 3rd grade when her mother shamed her about that, and she will never forget that no matter what else in the world is going on, if your slip is showing, the whole day will not go off as planned. Snow can ruin any party. We have got to fix that snow. Make momma proud. Or just stop wearing slips altogether and only use this skill on those you meet along the way.

     One of the things that really gets to me is when someone pulls what seems to be a problem out of my hands. If I am having a moment with my phone, I have a friend who deems it his God given right to yank my phone out of my hand to show me how to correctly correct the offending problem. I don’t usually stand too close to him, and if I am having a problem I will hide my phone until I give up and then hand it to him to fix. I have a problem with being man-handled.

     The point here is that between our relationships, our environment, our family backgrounds, and our own genetic predispositions, we need to align ourselves with people who are capable of dealing with our insecurities, misapprehensions, hyper-sensitivities and insensitivities. I mean, your friends can say things to you that no one else would even dare to say to you unless they had you at gun point. And that’s what makes you friends.

runningturtle87

This entry was posted in Herrington. Bookmark the permalink.

4 Responses to Herrington: Friendship or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Criticism

  1. Chris Herrington says:

    Go figure….

  2. Chris Herrington says:

    get back to square one, back to a point of satisfaction, you must then think if you were satisfied with your environment or if in fact you were satisfied with yourself within that environment. When we mistake the two, we tend to try to mold the environment, instead of ourselves. If I try to control the environment in a state of entropy, then I am always doing damage control and never enjoying my life. The little Dutch boy with only so many fingers is bound to drown. Get back in the game.
    Let’s go back then to your core: Who are you and what are you doing about it? You are a writer. You are creative and fun, but overworked and tired. You have given away your fun. Delegate and make others responsible for themselves and their fair share. Lockup your equipment; they have not proven worthy of it. Give less, and miss less. Take time for yourself. Don’t give permission to do everything that you have to track and put away. Don’t sell treats and give freedoms to when in fact you are only later going to feel like you were taken advantage of.
    In any case, remember that if you do not get this back on track you will have reached a point where you can meet no one else’s needs, and you will fail your mission completely. Make time to have time to give away. Back off, get replenished, work on yourself, and allow others to fend for themselves more. A child who borrows a pencil in every class every day but does not return it, at 5 cents per pencil is spending $819 dollars just on pencils. If every child in NISD did that every day for all 13 years of school, the pencil bill alone would exceed 5 million dollars. Some kids need some help, only a few need constant help. If they need to be institutionalized, make a paper trail to document that.
    It would be a shame if we left where we were so effective because we neglected the basic laws of relationships: It takes two, and you are only one. In a home, you are one of 5. In a classroom, you are one of 16. In a country, it takes team work and effort every day to keep from crashing the whole boat. Do what you can, and then let others do their share. Trust and verify. Do not give others so much rope that they hang themselves; you cannot live with that. You are good at what you do; don’t let that get spoiled because of a few slip ups: Lock it up, and take charge. Be healthy and be mindful. Be flexible, but don’t force yourself to be compromised. Get organized and set guidelines. Don’t allow yourself to get run out of your own life. By anyone. runningturtle87

  3. May not Make it to Retirement says:

    Well…last year two cameras and my Physics keys were stolen, and I do believe my Chemistry keys have been recently lifted. I need a friend who will talk me out of quitting education, because I’m looking hard at job boards. You say the bad things might not keep coming at me? That would be nice, but I forecast another difficult 8 months ahead of me. I’m losing my positive spirit. They’re sucking the life out of me.

    I need a friend. :)

    • Chris Herrington says:

      When we fight on several fronts, it is easy to lose track of the amount we are bleeding out until it is too late and we feel like we are on death’s door. Losing your sense of purpose and not getting your personal needs met is the baseline for feeling satisfaction and confidence. If I have lost my salt….my life becomes bland and banal. What is the point?
      The question then turns from, “What can I do for others?” to, “What is in it for me?” This is the path of burnout. I have a solution, but yo may not like it too much. You feel that the entire world is telling you that this is as far as you can go. This is a good time to listen, deeply. You cannot go on the way that you are going. So, yo have to transform yourself. It is not enough to simply hit a few balls a couple of times a week. If you are going to get

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

*