We Have Come into Being to Praise--Not to Criticize

We have not come into being to hate or to destroy;
We have come into being to praise, to labor, and to love.

Last week, in talking about the three fundamental actions of being human, to praise, to labor and to love, I focused on praise in relation to the One, the Source and End of All Existence. But, like the other two, labor and love, praise has two directions: toward the One and toward all that is created.

It is not enough to praise the One, That Which Is Without End, That Which is Beautiful, True, and Prefect, the Creating, Judging, Redeeming, and Sanctifying Power. Human existence depends also on praising all that is part of the One, all that flows from and back to the One. Few of us would stand in front of a great painter and criticize her painting. Or in front of a great sculptor and point out all the flaws in his sculpture. Or in front of a weaver and find fault with the pattern or the colors or the looseness or tightness of the weave. Yet that is what we do every day as we go about criticizing friends or family members or strangers—whether their clothes or their bodies or their actions or failures to act or habits or their wishes and dreams—or a landscape or the weather or the food we are served. This isn’t enough that. That isn’t enough this. We find it so easy to find the one flaw in all that is good. We do it out of habit, without thinking, as if it were our right to cast judgment in this way on everyone and everything.

We criticize so often, so carelessly. It seems as if it is nothing. Yet to criticize the works of a great artist is a grave offense. It means we are not acknowledging the good, not appreciating the beauty; we are not being grateful. But there is another deleterious effect we often forget about as we rush to give our opinion. (Our opinion! How consequential our preferences are! How important we are, we who can pass judgment on all things, with our profound knowledge, our wide perspective, our deep experience of the many ways a good life can be lived!). Here is the great harm we do with our careless flinging of judgments: our rush to criticize, our failure to praise, covers what we see with a dark, oily film, which makes it harder for others to see the beauty underneath. And it also makes it hard for that creature we have covered with our criticisms to breathe out all its beauty and goodness; like a seal or a seabird after an oil spill, it begins to die a slow, painful and cruel death, unless someone comes and removes that film of oil.

One of the stories Idries Shah tells in Tales of the Dervishes reveals the ingratitude and harm of criticism. It also points to the foolishness of making judgments of any kind from our limited perspective.

An idiot looked at a browsing camel. He said to it: “Your appearance is awry. Why is this so?”
The camel replied: “In judging the impression made, you are attributing a fault to that which shaped the form. Be aware of this! Do not consider my crooked appearance a fault.
‘Get away from me, by the shortest route. My appearance is thus for function, for a reason. The bow needs the bentness as well as the straightness of the bowstring.
‘Fool, begone! An ass’s perception goes with an ass’s nature.’

The next time you are about to open your mouth to criticize, remember the talking camel.

Try to go for a day, just one day, without criticizing anything, another human being, yourself, your life, the world around you. It’s a hard, hard habit to break. Our little selves, our false egos love this game. It makes us feel so superior. But try. And instead of looking for fault, just look at all that exists, look without judgment or expectation or preference, look with deep acceptance of and appreciation for what it is, for what is. And give thanks for it.

That would be a day of praise.