The Truth About the Cynic
There's not a creator alive who hasn't encountered some form of the judgy critical cynic on the internet. Filled with cold water and snide remarks, they swoop in on something you've made with unwanted critique or unflattering comparison. They've always got something up their sleeve to make you feel defensive or doubtful or insecure about what you're producing.
“Unsolicited feedback is criticism.”
If you're an inspirational or visionary creator, rest assured someone will pull out their self-righteous rationality card and 'logic' you to death about whatever visionary alternative you've offered with your art and ideas. They will heap scorn and dismiss as crazy, whatever the vision.
It's not you. It's them.
See, the cynic has a secret - they're actually an aborted creator and visionary.
The critic is one who's never given expression to their inner world. They're an optimist who swallowed all the lies and gave up.
The critic never has any creations of their own. It's easier and safer to tear you down than risk making and sharing anything of their own - that would make them vulnerable.
Life has given them one too many disappointments that now they luxuriate in their shallow puddle of "being realistic". They feel that they've accessed elitism by "knowing how the world really works" and come off as superior, smug and lordly over the ‘infantile joy’ of your passion and hope.
The cynics are cowards who have abandoned their visionary path.
You trigger them with your unapologetic freedom; sharing your creations and visions and thoughts and ideas without caring that not everyone agrees and some people might actually think you're nutty.
The cynic is a visionary who's given up. The resistance was too painful, the ridicule too scary, so they didn't even try.
The cynic needs to shut you down so that they can stay comfortable in their superiority.
The cynic needs to affirm that he's not a coward for abandoning his vision. It was stupid and foolish so they poke, prod, point and jeer, smug, scorn, deride, devalue and discredit what you create and share because it makes them more comfortable to put you in a box that they can dismiss.
The cynic may even attack you personally. When they reach for your looks and personality, know that you're winning because they can't attack your creations. This is the Mavericks path. Greta Thunberg is on this path.
The great irony is that the cynics need the visionaries more than anyone. Their fire is out and they're desperately looking for a source to rekindle. There is a twisted excitement to tearing down others, especially when you're part of a group; but it is smoke and embers compared to the fire of a visionary passion. The cynic has forgotten, or lost the connection and it's too scary to try and be a creator now. Now they'd rather piss on you and deny ever having a fire in the first place.
It's sad and it's small and it's pathetic, and it's going to happen - so how will you respond?
What will you say to the cynics when they come to piss on your fire? They’re coming, but all they have is piss and lost passions.
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Be gentle with yourself because no one teaches us how to live this way. No one teaches us how to use all our Presence and Being to find our Selves in the world and the Work that we will do.
No one teaches us how to rely as equally on empathic intuition and body sensation as we do logical rationality. No one teaches us how to make sense of these intense desires to share deep truths that we only partially understand. Be gentle with yourself.