About the first criticisms
This is an entry from my journal. I comment on some important instances of criticism that made me a better person.
I had no interest in school. In hindsight, I think it is because I never felt that teachers had an interest in me, minus a couple of exceptions. They are there doing a profession that is streamlined and systematised to snuff out the je ne sais quoi that makes us human. Here is a standardised test, followed by another of the same kind, and behold your homework which you should parrot without ever thinking about anything, and so on for years. Then they complain that AI is making us less human when our public education has been breeding robotoids since its inception.
With football it was different. The coaches cared about me and all my teammates. Most local clubs were free of charge. Those involved were not getting paid for their efforts. They were effectively doing a community service. The few clubs that charged exorbitant fees for membership were reserved for rich kids. Too bad for them that pay-to-win does not make you a good athlete and too bad for us that pay-to-win is the ethos of our society.
One day I decided to show up to a training session of a club that was not too far from my house. They were wearing yellow and green, which I thought was fancy. I took my bicycle and within 30 minutes I was at the pitch were they trained. I only knew two boys from the team, but was not friends with them. The rest were new faces. All pitches I played in during that time were made out of gravel. No grass at all, apart from whatever wild vegetation would grow on the sides.
I went there because I had a hunch that sport would suit me well. I did not do it to make friends, even though that happened as a welcome side-effect. I left my bicycle on the side. It was a BMX bike that I got second-hand as a reward for my first paid job. I fixed it myself and was happy to have it.
I walked up to the coach. He was a locksmith in his 60s. I was in my early teens. “Hello, can I play?”. By that time, my only involvement with football was through the neighbourhood games I partook in together with the other kids. Those events typically did not have a ball. We would put small stones in a plastic bottle and kick it around, with pieces of clothing functioning as goal posts. Such is the reality of poor people, but also of children making more with less. The coach looked at me and said “start running”.
I thought the instructions were unclear. Where should I be running towards? Should I go at maximum speed or not? How does one even run properly? There were no footballs in sight either. Was I at the wrong place? I had so many questions! “Why are you still here?” he said “run until you catch up with the others”. His hand was pointing to the nearby grove. I then learnt that we were supposed to do laps around the wider area. The training session had already started and I was in for a gruelling experience.
Catching up with the others was the easy part. I could already keep up with them. Though I soon realised that their technique and knowledge of the game were vastly superior to mine. Boys being boys, the first comments you get are likely to be snarky and aggressive. This is a test of your mettle which already establishes your relationship with the group. A decent percentage of boys socialise with each other through aggression, including violence, something that the polite society which controls public education can neither comprehend nor accept.
One of them did the welcoming and others joined in with their laughter: “the nerdling was late from all the studying”. He did not know that my neighbourhood had prepared me for this baptism of fire: “I had to take care of your mum, you little whore” with exclamations from the others. We kept running. That guy ended up becoming one of my best friends. There are many such stories of bromance built on what outsiders will mistake as anti-social behaviour.
A society that does not provide males with a controlled outlet for their natural aggression and attendant competitiveness, sport being among the most effective, is a society that creates insecure men and impostors. Already from day one I learnt important lessons for life. My coach effectively told me, through his instructions and remarks, that I cannot afford to overthink things. He compelled me into action. This was followed-up by the test of character that the group of athletic boys had in store for me. What I was already aware of and then understood fully is that if you cannot take harsh words, then you are not prepared for the much harsher realities.
The next criticism came in the form of the game itself. I was woefully incompetent. While I could still outrun people, I had no notion of what to do. I lacked situational awareness. My ball control was terrible and the execution was clumsy. I was a liability on the field. Before anyone told me anything, I understood through the activity itself that I was doing it wrong. Then, of course, came the words of the coach who likened me to a goat because I was leaning my head down and charging instead of looking around and acting thoughtfully. He also called me a “mattock” to suggest that I had no grace in my touch.
I did not need the coach to tell me anything, though his critique was immensely helpful. The very fact that I acted brought forth the consequences and those established the feedback loop for my subsequent learning. This is the same lesson of not overthinking, as the brain is a lousy instrument for recognising stimuli. Act and let the body show you what it understands very well: friction, fatigue, inaccuracy, ineffectiveness. The limits are right there.
My coaches were not sages nor were the lads any more sophisticated than the average boy. We all were, in a sense, dumb. Though we all knew that even in the tiny world of amateur football, there were truths to be had. As such, we were working towards our betterment in one area, whose principles could then be extended to all other walks of life.
I was learning quickly because I was doing it wholeheartedly. I do not fool around. Within a few months I was so much better than everyone that my transfer to a stronger team was inevitable. I went to play with the big boys and the young adults, now wearing red and cyan. There I learnt that my achievements were not actually significant. To keep playing, I had to become a monster of competitiveness, to carry a dagger between my teeth, and to sleep with one eye open. “Coach, my spleen hurts” I said on the first training session. “The spleen needs running” he said nonchalantly while I was gasping for breath. I barely made it. This too was criticism that went partly unsaid: you show and so you do not need to tell. The situation alone was informing me what the path forward was and that to proceed I had to work hard. Having someone point out what is otherwise subject to reason is always helpful.
Boys can be nasty, though they are children, so their capacity for harm is underdeveloped. But young adult athletes will happily eat you alive if you are a pushover. One of them told me not to enter the pitch because he would cut me down. And, true to his word, he tried to tackle me in a dangerous way as soon as I got the ball. I responded in kind at the next turn of play, flattening him with a crunching challenge, showing him that he being a man and me being a boy was not going to be easy for him. He was still stronger than me, though my attitude was just as unyielding.
I knew that failure to cope with this challenge would be the same as asking “why am I even here?”. This is how life is. It speaks the truth and you become a better version of yourself only if you are prepared to accept it and act accordingly. Crisis, else judgement, consists in the understanding of the situation and thus of the appreciation of the conduits to success. To avoid criticism is to not wish to develop situational awareness, to not recognise natural limits, to pretend that you are someone else, and to lead an unfulfilling life under the tyranny of falsehoods.
That guy also became a good friend. We already hugged each other after the game. I did not need a guardian, though I got one anyway. Demanding men turn into babies as soon as they find their equal. They only respect what they see, not what you claim. They need other men in their life to keep them honest, to hold them accountable, and to remind them not to engage in bullshit. Men who only have their mother/girlfriend/wife around are missing a vital part of the wider accountability structure. Men need the phalanx, to feel each other’s shoulders, to know that the team is there for them, and to be at all times aware of their own duty to hold the ranks and to keep it real.
Fundamentally, criticism is about taking responsibility. If you do not accept criticism, then you essentially are unreliable: you do not recognise your own situation, so you lack the basic training and concomitant intuitions to discern anything out there in a manner that is thorough. You build up the capacity by being honest. You act exactly because this is how you elicit feedback. In effect, you attract the critic, either in the form of a person who understand the field of endeavour better than you, or as a situation that already shows you your weaknesses.
One of my coaches was a bus driver, among other handyman jobs. I remember him, on multiple occasions, waiting for us on a rainy day to go to some faraway village for a match. He was a working class fellow who was not getting any money for his efforts. And he was a cartoon character in many ways, due to how funny his sayings and mannerisms were. But we all respected him. I was always inspired by his willingness to show up even in terrible weather conditions. He did not say anything about it, though he was effectively telling us, through his deeds, that we stick to our duty no matter what. This is the unflinching commitment I admire the most. If I say it, I do it. If I am doing it, I keep it that way through thick and thin until its natural completion.
There comes a point in life where you outgrow criticism in the area you are involved in. If you generalise it, you eventually escape from criticism altogether. Not because you do not want it anymore, but simply as a function of you not having superiors. Once you climb high enough, the exact altitude becomes irrelevant as you still are way above your baseline and that of the average person. The other mountaineers will see you as their equal, at least in terms of your attitude. They understand that you can figure out the rest without their input.