Our athletes have done what has rarely been done before, and yet… there are those who will still find it hard to come up with a word of praise. Instead, they say, “Oh, 7 medals are too few for a country of our size.” Or, “We don’t have a good system, a good diet, a good anything!” Or again, “Even if we count all the medals India has ever won in the Olympics, the total is still less than what Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps have bagged between them”. It just shows that if you make up your mind to criticise, you won’t need to look far to find ample material to crib about.
Whingeing goes beyond the Olympics to cover almost all aspects of our everyday life. There are those who whine incessantly about their jobs and employers, about traffic, about the municipality, neighbours…. And they are so miserly with praise, the only way to get a decent compliment out of them is to pick up third-degree techniques from your nearest police station. I often ask myself what is it that makes them skimp so much, when a shabash here and a ‘good job’ there won’t cost them a rupee?
My own DIY psychoanalysis told me that it’s due to an inborn negative disposition. It’s vinegar that runs in their veins, and altering their fundamental attitude to life would probably call for hospitalisation and a long procedure of transfusion. There is also vicarious vanity at play because critics are seen as being somehow intellectually superior to those who are more free with praise. It’s an oblique way of letting you know that their standards are up there. If your benchmark is P.V. Sindhu, you can’t be seen complimenting some stripling playing badminton at the clubhouse.
Psychologists tell us, that at an interpersonal level, a costive inability to praise is repackaged jealousy. These guys are obviously seething with so much unexpressed envy that they can’t stand someone else feeling good about themselves and what they have done. Sometimes, just sometimes, the causes are not so ignoble. Apparently, some people don’t like to be seen to be flattering. So they go to the opposite extreme and “damn with faint praise”. Then there are those who believe that compliments breed complacency—pat someone on the back and pronto, you take the fire out of their belly. If you ask me, it is a pretty rickety excuse… it’s like refusing to give someone a lift in your car on a wet morning, so that he or she better appreciates the benefits of walking.
There is one thing worse than not praising you; and that is praising someone else—in your presence. This is meanness topped with mischief and will feel like salt on your wounds. The person being praised could be your counterpart (ouch!), your cousin (ouch again), or—the unkindest cut of all—your rival. There is a trendy word to describe it—it is called ‘negging’. Considering it is so vicious, it is surprisingly common, and you are sure to have experienced negging at work, at home and all points in between.
After I was subjected to this form of criticism for a long time, I began developing my own homespun antidote. When my wife pointedly tells me that Purshottam next door is excellent at tending to the garden, keeping the house tidy, buying fish, etc., I hear her out and then, smiling blandly, say something complimentary about Purshottam’s wife. It usually nips negging in the bud.
We need to accept that most of us are hardwired to like nice, warm things said about ourselves. We didn’t need Abraham Maslow to spell out the hierarchy of needs and tell us that human beings crave for appreciation even more than we crave for money. Didn’t we know that as children? A shabash from papa or momma meant the world to us. Over the years, we may have outgrown the people we need praise from, but we haven’t outgrown the need.
So, for a start, let’s hear a round of applause for our sports heroes. Be sure to clap a little louder for our women’s hockey team who deserve a ‘gold’ for gallantry. And of course for Neeraj Chopra who calmly, and with an almost sublime level of confidence, gave a fairy tale ending to our Olympic story.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author’s and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of THE WEEK.
