... I end the essay here, not telling you the particulars, as a demonstration of what, because of battering rather than constructive criticism, is sometimes lost.
-- Alice Walker, from “Getting as Black as My Daddy” in Anything We Love Can Be Saved

Huh?

Yeah, this is an odd thought. Especially since it doesn’t seem to connect itself.

Well, that’s the whole point. Alice Walker wrote this ending to an essay after reflecting on the many attacks she’d received over the years from writing about what’s real in the world and what’s real to and for her. She stopped writing right inside the essay’s argument against the dullness of writing about one’s personal life and interests, leaving readers with space to only imagine what this Pulitzer Prize winning writer could have composed and concluded. She squashed what she’d started to write and, as a result, an incomplete essay was born.

Now even for writers like Alice Walker whose many novels, short stories, poetry, and works of non-fiction have won numerous awards and accolades, criticism is off-putting, even damning as public libraries and schools ban their works because they are deemed too whatever. But for the most part, such condemnation doesn’t make them quit doing what they do best. But, for the rest of us mere mortals, disapproval and disparagement from others are often what stop our dreams from coming to fruition.

Take, for instance, equal pay for women. Still, in 2007, women, who, in many cases, provide half if not all of their families’ support, receive 77 cents to every dollar men receive. However, when lawmakers have opportunities to put teeth in 40-year old policies that can rectify this injustice, arguments about how often and easily women leave the workforce to have and care for families or that women aren’t as ambitious as men surface and override any attempts at economic reconciliation for women. So then what happens? Activist for such change are silenced and sent back to their dens, the issue returns to the back-burner, and women and families still struggle to make ends meet. Women and their families have essentially been told “no,” “shut up, and sit down” and they end up settling for the 77 cents and sacrifices too numerous to count.

Okay, maybe that was an opportunity to advance a platform, but hopefully you see the point – when criticized, no matter what the issue, we shut down and sit down.

Okay, think of something as simple – compared to the issue above – as starting your own business. Cynics and detractors will tell you day in and out that what you’re planning is impossible, that it’s already been done, or that you will surely fall on your face and end up alone with no one to love you in the middle of the night because you drove everybody away with your talk about this business. If you’re like most of us, you’ll stop your talk of business, or maybe slow it down until sometimes later. You’ll put your business plan on the shelf for later, but, because of the barrage of criticism and doubt, quite possibly that widget and gadget you imagined will never be created, tested, or sold. Thus, your widget will never save someone’s life or, at the very least, make life better.

The assaults to what we believe in, what we do, and what we fight to sustain can cause us to become mellow or less driven, and our journey practically purposeless. In the end, if we aren’t thoughtful about the harsh criticisms thrown our way, allowing them to steal our ambition, outlet, platform, and ability to move forward, we could leave empty space where something should have been said or done in order to further humankind.

Still yourself against the attacks that come at you. Don’t curb or silence your voice. Don’t change your words and don’t bow out. Be bold, hold your own, keep going, and never end your thought before you’ve said everything you need to say.

Sadiqqa © 2007