Would you avoid yourself?

Anyone can break off a branch or chop down a tree, but few have the patience to cultivate the soil around a tree and nurture the tree until it bears fruit.   Anyone can burn their bridges, though fewer will make the effort to build bridges.  It will always be easier to bulldoze over a house than it is to lay a foundation.

For example, to pick apart the ideas of others while idly sitting back, never quite initiating an original thought of our own.  For whatever reason, negativity and criticism flow like water -- erosive and effortlessly.

How will you be remembered?  As the person who built others up, or the one who tore down everyone around them with your cutting tongue?  You probably want to be remembered like the people you try to surround yourself with, and I doubt you purposely surround yourself with people who knock the wind out of your sails.

There's nothing wrong with collaborating with others and together mutually helping each other become better people.  But if there's one-sided faultfinding going on, you know "constructive criticism" that only flows in one direction, well, soon enough the crickets will fill the silence.

BTW: I was inspired with these thoughts today after listening to two people on NPR complain...