Criticism.

How do you define the word criticism?

The general definition of the word "criticism" means to judge someone based on merits or faults. The general view on criticism is judging only a person faults without the merits..

Criticism(based on my own classification) can be classified into:

• Constructive

• Destructive

• ..... And hypocritical.

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I am going to talk about the "hypocritical" criticism here as we all are familiar with the first two. We may be familiar with the hypocritical one but it could be that we haven't given it a name like I did.

Sometimes we criticise people who do things we see as bad only for us to do worse when we are given the chance. That's what hypocritical criticism sounds like. In criticising those people, we fail to put ourselves in their shoes and ask ourselves "would I do better when faced with a similar situation?".

Let me tell you a story :

There's this politician in my country, a governor actually who is disliked by many and is seen as a bad leader, a dictator, a corrupt government official and any other bad name that could be attached to the name of a politician. The people were constantly complaining about him on TV, on radio and any other telecommunication source out there. There was this man that came on radio someday and was asked "what do you think about Malan Mahdi? (let's assume this to be the name of the governor. The man's response :

" Of all the governors to have ever ruled this state, I have never seen worse than Malan Mahdi. He is so corrupt. He embezzled and diverts money from public funds into his personal account. He loots, steals and and doesn't give the people their due, leaving them all to suffer! ". He went on to say more things I can't say here.

Unknown to this man, Malan Mahdi was listening to that same radio station on that same time the man was saying all these. The next day he ordered for the man to come to the Government House. The man boarded a tricycle to the governor's house , thinking he was gonna be a hero who went to the government house without fear despite making insulting comments about the government. He finally arrived at the house and, to his surprise, he saw the governor he had been insulting waiting at his gate to receive him. He went to meet him, leaving the tricycle rider there. On meeting the man, the governor's face widened into a smile and he gave the man $200 which is a huge amount of money here then he said to him "take this money, go and give the tricycle rider this money as your transport fare then come back". The man went away with the money then gave the tricycle rider only $1.5. The tricycle rider thanked him and went away while the man pocketed the rest. He went back to the governor and he took him into the house, served him as a special guest and was very happy.

Unknown to him, the governor sent some guards to trace the tricycle rider to inquire about how much he was given, of course he said $1.5. When they returned with feedback to the governor, he ordered the man who criticised him on radio to be locked up for 10 years in prison. His last words to him were,

" you who has tongue to smear names, are you any better than me? If you were the one in this position, you could be worse!". With his the man was taken away.

Before we open our mouths to criticise people(if we must) let's always think twice. Are you removing a speck from someone's eyes while you have a log in yours, are you a pot calling kettle black? Are you any different from the person you are criticising? How sure are you that you wouldn't be worse than him if you are in a similar position? In short are you been hypocritical?

We live in difficult times in my country, but I have never opened my mouth to insult any of our leaders . I only do my best and pray to God for ease my affairs and that of my fellow Nigerians as I don't know how it feels to rule a country of about 206, 000,000 citizens. Could I be worse if I get there or will I do better? You never know until you really get there. We criticise people sometimes when we might be way worse than them on the thing we criticise them for.

If we must criticise, let's do it constructively. If we do negative criticism, make sure you aren't doing same thing for which you criticise someone else for.

Thank you very much for reading.

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Yours Layly.

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