I have been having a difficult time lately handling criticism and simply hearing very different opinions than my own as well as hearing my own opinions attacked. I usually consider myself as someone who welcomes opposing views as a way of growing, but sometimes, I’ll admit, there are growing pains, haha. It’s just so much easier to surround myself (both physically and digitally) by people who agree with me and are similar to me. In the end, I honestly DO like KNOWING other views, but I think the process of finding out about them can be difficult.
One reason for this is that, quite often, those who have interesting views are those who believe very strongly in something. They* are so passionate that they can say things on waves of emotions in addition to their passion blinding themselves sometimes. Well, blinding is not a good word for it…. It’s more like- if you really believe you’re right about something …….
(which hopefully you DO think you’re right because if you think you are wrong then why would you think that? …..of course, I guess there’s always that middle ground where you believe one thing but you’re not quite sure so you’re still open and searching)
…..anyway, if you really believe you’re right about something and you’ve already heard many of the main arguments against it, then you kind of start dismissing those arguments because you already know you disagree with them. The problem with this is 1) there might be more points that you HAVEN’T ever heard and, more importantly, 2) you shut down to those with opposing opinions. Shutting down to others is bad because, you can lose touch with the reasons WHY they still think differently than you. This is a first step in lack of understanding and lack of compassion and ends up in people just yelling at each other and hating each other as opposed to civilly discussing and compromising or at least admitting that there are legit reasons for believing differently. It also leads down the road of seeing people as the enemy and as “other” instead of as human because if you see them as so different from you that you can’t relate to them, then you don’t care about them even as fellow humans…. and that does not lead to good things.
So…. anyway… that’s my quick and confusing rant for today. I’m sure I’ll read it later and be like, “What?”
*I’m not using “they” to imply that this DOESN’T include me, because it definitely does.
I have been known to have a problem with accepting criticism or views which are different than mine. I know that I definitely need to get over this and learn to accpet it because it is what I am going to be dealing with for the rest of my life. I'm not going to see eye-to-eye with every one of my fellow educators, or with parents, other faculty, administrators. I'm going to have the principal observing my lessons and telling me things I should change. Next year, my mentor teacher will constantly be giving me feedback and criticism (hopefully constructive) and I'll need to learn to accept it and use it to grow. It's just something we have to work on, I think.
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