Critics & Creatives

“Get a real job instead of doing motivational speaking”

Comments can be cutting. For the introverted and non-confrontational, the digital sphere is a deadly minefield. It’s a free market: opinions proliferate, credentials are optional, context is often disregarded, and restraint is rare. People fire off comments they’d never say face-to-face, buffered by distance and shielded by anonymity. The result: an arena which provokes, nitpicks, and slips into low-grade gossip and high-speed judgement. The critics are waiting for something to correct, scanning for flaws, on the lookout for a mistake; less interested in being right than in making someone else wrong. Of course, not every critic is ill-intentioned—and even if they are, blunt feedback can be sharpened into something useful. Still, the sheer volume of negativity astounds me. “May all living entities become calm,” the Bhāgavata says. Nowadays, I embrace the criticism as a “universal balancing.” In all honesty, I’m often praised well beyond what is realistic. And so, the pendulum must swing back—sharp, unfounded criticism, arriving on time to keep you humble. It evens things out—imbalance never sustains.

Reflections on criticism feature prominently in the Bhāgavata, where it’s shown to be a kind of spiritual barometer. The great ones are nindādi-śūnya—free from the urge to criticise at all. Not just outwardly restrained, but internally uninterested. No appetite. Further, even hearing criticism is unsettling. If it’s untrue, it stings to see someone misjudged. If it is true, it still hurts, knowing that someone stumbled and is now entangled in the consequences. If we hear negative narratives and are intrigued, entertained, excited, and drawn in, it indicates internal stagnation. If we feel a silent joy when someone slips, that’s worrying news for us, as much as for them. We’re called to rise above the clouds of hostility and project spiritual positivity. Through this undercurrent of judgment, we must keep moving, creating, risking, and bringing our best offering into the world. If good souls are drowned out by the noise of negativity, it’s the greatest loss.

Bracket the author, de-gender the language, and absorb this powerful insight about life “in the arena”:

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 in 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. (Theodore Roosevelt, Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910)

Who’s actually in the arena? Who’s putting real time and energy behind something meaningful? Who is working to bring out the best in others? Who steps forward because the moment demands it? To those sincerely trying their best in the arena—the restless creatives, who care a little too much and carry a little too much—all our best wishes. Keep going. Onwards and upwards.