Whenever I found a person is weak in something, I usually don’t bother to point it out as long as it doesn’t bother me. Sometimes the person is pretty close to me, and I felt the urge to tell her so that she is aware of it and improve on it. But this usually doesn’t work quite well, as pointing out someone’s weakness could be easily taken as a criticism or complaint, or totally ignore as my statement carries no merit to them. You know what is the worst? Pointing out the mistake or weakness of girlfriend. People who are very close to us would probably be very sensitive with what we said, and it could easily turn good intention into very bad situation.
Lets take me for example, where the girls usually pointed me up as someone un-gentleman and not very caring of people around me. Basically I can understand why I am labelled as un-gentleman, as I usually left them behind while crossing the road. I usually give myself some excuses such as the girls is not paying attention (or they are too busy chit chatting before crossing the road) or I can’t actually hold their hands to cross or I can’t chase them across like a herd of sheep or I had used to walking alone. With all excuses aside, I think I am still a tiny bit at fault. There are many ways which I could interpret their comments, such as:
“Maybe they are right. I shall pay more attention next time”
“I really suck. I should work on this”
“They are big girl already and I am not their boyfriend. Aren’t they capable of crossing the road?”
“I don’t care what they think. I think there is nothing wrong with me”
“Complain about me some more. You very good meh?”
So, I could choose to response from the very best to the very worst. Sometimes I also found it quite hard to accept criticism. If I can logicalised their criticism, then it is a little bit easier to accept. If I adapt a more open-minded policy, then I would be able to take this in a more constructive way. But, if the criticism comes from a lesser person, I might just ignore them totally. Sometimes, I do get offended as I felt people are asking too much of me. I was thinking, “I am who I am. Take it or leave it”. This is the time I am being a little bit too defensive. Sometimes people criticize for my good; perhaps I just take it as a little awareness and ponder further on it. Only by awareness (self or by other people) can we actually become a better person (as we learn more about ourselves from a 3rd person view). Perhaps most people are always very self-centred, thinking they are always right and it is always other people fault. Asking and saying things like:
“Why he doesn’t listen to me”
“Why she is so naïve and childish”
“He is such a control freak. He is always right and I am always wrong”
“She is so stubborn and always never listen to me”
At the same time we are saying these things, the opposite might say the equal to us. Who is right and who is wrong then? All these are never really meant to point out who fault is it, bit rather to acknowledge that a problem exists and how could we actually solve it. Being a young person as we are, we usually don’t know or don’t want to take the first step towards problem solving, thinking, “Why should I always be the one who apologized? He is the one who is wrong.” Thus we never grow up and never understand, keep trapping ourselves in the eternal loop of despair.
Criticising is a great skill to be mastered. How to criticize without offending, and how to accept one without being offended. Most of the time it might just turn out bad, especially with the one we love. The most famous phrase is, “I am already like this when you know me. Why didn’t you say anything back then?” Though we can choose to keep quiet and "tahan" with it for the rest of our life, and we could try to help our other half to be a better person. Though this is the most ideal situation, but many un-ideal scenarios do pop up, such as we criticize too much, criticize unnecessary, criticize without merit or have a bad habit of criticizing. Whenever we criticized someone, there would be a natural urge for the someone to criticize us back (unless we are a perfect beings). I guess that’s how we learn, as long as we know how to manage it.
Perhaps being humble with a little bit of logical analysis would help :)
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