Taking Personally

One of my good friends was telling about some of her experiences. It seems to happen often with her that people advise her “why do you take it personally?”. This is mostly when they have to tell her something cold or callous about her work. And my friend gets stressed by this. So the question was how can one not take personally when one has put all her effort and keenness into a certain thing? For example if you cook with all your love and care for your partner and the partner just says its not tasty enough. How does one deal with it? How does one not  take it personally? When you have put hours of earnest and passionate effort into a report and your colleague brings some stupid unthought argument to show that its not good enough. How do you stay impersonal and unaffected and go with the same colleague in the evening for an official supper? 

So how do we not take things personally? 

I think there are two ways we can look at it. First of all not taking it personally means one has to be detached from it. And this means not getting too much engaged in what you do. If I do not put my best effort then I won’t get so attached to what I do. However this actually means I have to get less passionate about what I do. I lose passion and, hence, I also lose taking comments personally. This is a good plan but not a very positive strategy. There has to be a second way. A more joyful and interesting way. Not this bleak passionless way. 

If we think a bit more then we can see where the real culprit is in all this confusion. In a situation there are two kinds of participants. The first kind of participant is physical consisting of impersonal inanimate things. It includes our work our effort our tools and our product. The second is living things that can judge. 

And there are two kinds of information that we can get from those who judge. One is factual and the other is judgemental. For example factual information will consist of the real characteristics (which is the same for any observer). The judgemental information is something that is given by a person without much thought. These are mostly affected by the person’s own issues and mental state and not by what he or she might be observing. 

So while doing something we should get passionate and personal with the work (which is the nonjudgemental impersonal participant in an event) and not with the ones who may/will judge. And when my product is being judged I have to focus on the factual information I get about it. If someone says that my report is crap then I have to think is it a factual comment or a judgemental? If it is a factual comment then this will be observed by everyone and will be with some reason. If someone says the cake I baked was not tasty then to make it a fact the judge should give me factual reasons about what went wrong. If the comment is without reasons and facts then it is just a “judgemental” information. A judgemental information, as we discussed, does not depend on the product. It just depends on the psychological-condition of the person passing it. If someone did not like my cake (without any apparent reason) then may be that someone has got a headache or some such health problem. Or may be he had a terrible fight an hour before with his friend and is not in a mental state to appreciate anything nice. 

To summarise, I think, the recipe to not take things personally is two fold. Get attached to the work and not to the persons who may be judging it. And while getting information about the work try to discriminate between factual comments and judgemental comments. Factual comments are universal (can be seen by anyone with similar experience) and come with reasons. Judgemental comments are mostly because of the state of mind in which the commentator is (and hence just reflects his mental state and not any attribute of your work). And someone with a bad state of mind just needs our compassion and may be a jaddu ki jhhappi (magical hug)!

Line from a wise mother!

        I recently met an interesting person. Somehow into our discussion came the topic of having babies. In that he quoted his mother who would say "when you decide to have a baby be prepared to raise the baby on your own!" Do not rely on a partner to help you or to be with you in this process. Many things can happen; relations can change and (heaven forbid) the partner may also meet with some unfortunate end. Among all these uncertainties one should not take the responsibility of a kid if he/she is not strong enough to do it on his/her own.

      I found this extremely intriguing. The more I think on it the more interesting it appears. First of all it means one should not rely on the assumed future benediction while starting something new. And if we contemplate further this line of thought we can have many interesting conclusions.

     Just like a baby when one starts seeing a potential partner one should be ready for any future. One should not start with the rosy assumption of "forever together" where "forever" is such an ill-defined phrase. But does it mean that we start a relation with lot of anxiety and negativity? Not necessarily. In fact its exactly the opposite. When starting a date we can assume that the love is already there. I remember in one of the movies the main character meets a girl in a club and asks her "can we fast forward to day-3?" Similarly when we are seeing anyone why can we not fast forward to day-N? What stops us from having the intensity of day-N on day-1? Because I have decided to give up relying on future-benevolence I can as well forget the impact of time all together. If I am not trying to trust on the existence of day-N then why not have day-N's intensity and excitement on day-1? Here N can be the day when your love would have been the most intense and beautiful.

     And if we project it a bit further then having a baby is like starting a new endeavor. And as the wise mother said let us not assume the presence of the partner in future and be ready to carry the endeavor forward on our own. Can we not assume "love" as this endeavor? Can we not, then, not assume the presence of the willingness or presence of the partner in this project as well? Then the love becomes free-standing depending only on my own willingness and earnestness. A love that is not depending on the other. The other is a (sweet) desirable part of it but not the necessary part of it.

    The more I ponder on the line of the wise mother the more beautiful and enlightening it sounds. If we can jump to day-N when we meet someone and jump on our own (without necessarily having his/her support) it is bliss, is not it?