Critical Condition

During my semester abroad in undergrad, I enrolled in a theatre class, along with the four girls with whom I was traveling. The course format included 12 productions in various theatres across London; everything from big, glamorous musicals on the West End, to tiny indie plays near Westminster.

After each production we’d walk out into the dark London night in search of a pub so we could eat and drink and dissect the play. This wasn’t just for fun, of course; this was the assignment. We were being graded on our ability to critically evaluate the productions.

One evening we went to a small studio theatre in SoHo to see a play called the Pugilist Specialist. This was a post-9/11 play with anti-war undertones and a damning portrayal of the armed forces. The set, only two benches; the cast, just four soldiers.

After the show, the five of us walked in silence to the nearest pub, ordered beers and looked at each other. We were Americans, living abroad during the early years of the war in Iraq, and we had just seen a play critical of the American military complex. There was so much to critically assess, yet we said nothing.

It was the last production of the semester. We’d spent months in class passionately dissecting all the many plays we had attended. We’d torn apart lighting schemes, set pieces, costume designs. We’d criticized acting, dialogue, and chemistry. We’d challenged director’s choices and questioned a few musical scores. We even slammed one play’s use of a prosthetic penis when an actor unzipped his pants and revealed it to the audience, because its artificial look was distracting (only to later find out in a Guardian review, it wasn’t a prosthetic after all). But that night, after watching the Pugilist Specialist, I think we were all a little tired of throwing punches.

Thinking critically is a smart man’s game. It’s the purpose of education, the mark of intelligence, and what we all want our children and politicians alike to be good at. By default, thinking critically automatically rejects anything at face value. It’s the kind of high-level thinking that digs deeper into an understanding of something, be it as small as a play, or as big as a war. But perhaps the high value placed on thinking critically has manifested into a mindset of always being critical.

My oldest daughter Lowery was given a Beado set for her birthday. This is a craft in which microscopic beads are assembled on a tiny plate, then sprayed with water and left to dry and gel into a solid trinket. The set came with patterns to make butterflies, rainbows, and puppies. But after a few rounds of the prescribed shapes, Lowery wanted to branch out. She was determined to make a phone. Without a pattern, she used my own phone to determine the size and shape, and then freehanded the middle to look somewhat like a smart phone screen full of apps.

While working in her room on her free-style phone, I heard Lowery erupt in anger, followed by the tinkling of tiny beads hitting hardwood. I ran up the stairs to find her thrashing around the room, her face soaked in tears. “I’m so bad at this!” she screamed. I scanned the room to try to piece together what had happened. I saw the Beado tray overturned and beads scattered in all directions of her room; the phone was completely destroyed.

“I’m bad at everything!” she yelled as she flung herself face down on her bed.

I ran to her side, held her tightly, and let her rage within the confines of my arms. She eventually calmed herself, and all that was left was a deflated five-year-old who had spent the last few minutes beating herself up.

I listened closely to her self-criticisms. How she wanted the phone to be perfect, how she was excited to put it in her purse, how she was hopeful it would give her more chances to FaceTime with Nana. But it wasn’t coming together on the tray exactly how she had imagined it in her head. I explained to her, as gently as I could, that she is not allowed to talk badly about herself. “People will only think as highly of you as you do,” I said. “So be your own biggest champion.”

There I was, trying to persuade my daughter to be less critical of herself. Something I can’t even convince myself to do.

A few years into our marriage, I was explaining to Jim one night how disappointed I was in a particular chapter of my dissertation’s rough draft. And, at the same time, I was really unhappy with my design for Lowery’s first birthday party invitations. I was critical of both in equal measure. Jim listened with compassion and empathy, and was able to help me strategize ways to move forward on both fronts. When he could tell I was relaxing a bit he said, “I think if anyone looked inside your brain at any given time, they’d see an image of you sitting in a chair, punching yourself repeatedly in the face.” It was said in jest, and I took it that way, but it was the first time anyone had ever pointed out to me that I am extremely hard on myself.

I didn’t know there was any other way to be.

And yet, I can’t deny that many of my conversations with Jim, then and now, circle around my feelings on how a class could have gone better, or the worry over how a talk I presented at an event had been received, or the pressure I feel with the second book.

I’m not self-loathing, I don’t have low self-esteem, and I don’t feel unworthy of love. And yet, I spend a great deal of time steeped in pugilism, beating myself up over expectations that I put there in the first place.

In the classroom, I encourage my students to think critically, just as I had been forced by a very frightening British theatre expert. And I’ve got to assess their ability to do so by grading their papers with a very critical eye. At the end of the semester, they get to critically assess me when they fill out their evaluations. There is an expectation—a pressure—to be critical at every point along the way.

That expectation is maybe the most damning expectation upon us all. The need we all feel to be constantly judging, assessing, or assuming we know how to do something better. What else explains why people take to social media to publicly—and unnecessarily—criticize something as trivial as mixing up “your” and “you’re”?

But just because I don’t typically lob criticisms (especially publically) at people doesn’t mean I’m not a deeply critical person. I just turn it all inward. It’s often harsh and seemingly unending. Am I just anticipating the many ways I’ll be criticized by others, and am I just trying to beat everyone to the punch? Which is better: endlessly criticizing others, or harshly criticizing oneself? There’s certainly no reason to censure instances of bad grammar (which are, most often, just typos), but there’s really no reason that I am so damn hard on myself.

And nothing highlights that more than watching my five-year-old beat herself up over a simple arts and crafts project. Where was this coming from? Jim and I aren’t critical of her. Most of what Jim and I say to her is positive and uplifting. We don’t talk down to her, patronize her, or fill her head with self-doubt. She never hears us talk that way to each other either. And Lowery and London are always excited for the other’s small victories, openly offering each other praise. This isn’t to say the Morgan house is all compliments and positivity all the time, but for the most part, I take pride in how much our little family boosts each other up.

And I know Lowery doesn’t hear me verbally vilify myself. I consciously never say anything critical of my hair, my body, or the way I look. I’ve been so deliberate about that with my girls, that most of those thoughts have stopped even popping into my head at all. But it’s certainly possible that Lowery hears me self-criticize in tiny, covert ways. Maybe she hears me second guess myself. Verbally overthink something. Describe the ways I wish I could have done more and done better.

Maybe turning all my criticisms inward have made them spill out.

I often think about that play, and the silence among us after. How good it felt to sit there and just accept the play for what it was. The beer might have been part of that. But it wasn’t that the play was perfect; it was that we all needed a break from the criticism.

I’ve reached a point like I did in the theatre district in London: I’m tired of throwing punches.

I’ve got to be kinder to, and less critical of, myself. If I don’t, I’ll be to blame for my daughter being hard on herself. It’s a trait she either inherited from me, or it’s a trait she has developed watching me. But I refuse to be the reason my child is self-critical. I will not be a role model for that. So I resolve to knock it off with all this self-criticism. Of course, I know exactly what will happen if I don’t:

I’ll beat myself up.





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