Bouquets and brickbats

Verbal bouquets, in the form of rousing compliments, can really ramp up one’s spirits in a remarkable way. When we are complimented over our talents, skills, working acumen, etc, it does create that inexplicable exhilarating feeling in us, besides proffering that impetus to perform better in life’s any arena. On the contrary, brickbats can at times unnerve us, corrode our confidence and self-esteem.

Indeed, it’s good if we can learn the art of accepting both compliments and criticism phlegmatically without either getting elated over ego-soaring bouquets, or agitated over ego-singing brickbats. Now, let us at first consider the art of accepting the bouquets. Interestingly, many times, we tend to confuse ‘fawning’ with ‘appreciation’. I have a friend, who sometime back, forged great bonds with a virtual friend, residing in Mumbai, who always heaped plaudits on her whenever she posted her pictures and personal updates on a social networking site.

Slowly, she discerned they were all a ploy to prise out favours from her. Since, whenever this virtual friend used to come down here, she’d wheedle my friend in allowing her to stay at her place, all free of cost! Maybe, hadn’t my friend got swayed by those supposedly sweet bouquets, she could have saved herself from such unsavoury situations.

This apart, often being bowled over by blitzkrieg of bouquets, many find the sudden brickbats to be real devastating experience. This phenomenon could be clearly seen among celebs of the celluloid world. When these glitterati stars are shining brightly, with smashing success in the film firmament, they are showered with unstinted supply of bouquets in the form of adulations. But the moment their chequered career takes a downward swing, lo, they are hurled with brickbats, making them mental wrecks, truckling under mind-clobbering misery.

So, when we try taking the mind-elevating bouquets with equanimity, then even the mind-enervating brickbats, too, we’d be able to counter with same equipoise of mind. Here, I remember a friend, who always used to feel disillusioned over the way her hecto-ring boss used to take potshots at her, censuring everything she did.

Then slowly, she discerned that he himself was intellectually incompetent. So, the intellectual insecurity and inferiority in him had manifested itself as faux superiority complex. Now, she claims that the detractors who try denigrating us all the time, by their smear campaign and smarting comments, are those who are seriously and severely flawed themselves.

Finally, it’s up to us how we handle the sweet bouquets or the bitter unpalatable brickbats in life. Apparently, if we don’t get bowled over by those buttery ego-boosting bouquets, then we also will not get mentally battered, too, by the barbed ego-bursting brickbats.