Discarding Cheap-seat Feedback
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A quote from Brene Brown's Dare to Lead has been going around on social media:
“Don't grab hurtful comments and pull them close to you by rereading them and ruminating on them. Don't play with them by rehearsing your badass comeback. And whatever you do, don't pull hatefulness close to your heart.
Let what's unproductive and hurtful drop at the feet of your unarmored self. And no matter how much your self-doubt wants to scoop up the criticism and snuggle with the negativity so it can confirm its worst fears, or how eager the shame gremlins are to use the hurt to fortify your armor, take a deep breath and find the strength to leave what's mean-spirited on the ground. You don't even need to stomp it or kick it away. Cruelty is cheap, easy, and chickenshit. It doesn't deserve your energy or engagement. Just step over the comments and keep daring, always remembering that armor is too heavy a price to pay to engage with cheap-seat feedback.”
A day or two after reading these words of wisdom, I commented on a teacher friend's post about how his lecture on the first day of school (August 28) would be about Emmett Till, the 14-year-old Black boy who was lynched on August 28, 1955 after a white woman accused him of flirting with her (and decades later said she had lied). I commended my friend for this choice and said I hoped his students would make connections between that story from 65 years ago and current events. I specifically referred to what had recently happened in Kenosha and my grief over the disparities between how the armed 17-year-old who killed two people was treated in contrast to so many, many unarmed Black people...who somehow end up dead. A stranger replied to my comment, saying multiple things I found problematic, including defending the 17-year-old. I responded to him and went to bed. The next morning I saw that someone else, another stranger, had replied. His comment did not in any way address any of what I said. It was a personal attack. It was what Brene Brown would call cheap-seat feedback.
Even though that stranger knew absolutely nothing about me, his attack still stung. As a rule, I don't respond to personal attacks (nor do I engage in them), since there is nothing productive that can come from them. Remembering Brown's words, I actively worked (and it was active work) to let the comment go. First, I turned off notifications for the post, so that if anything else ugly transpired, I wouldn't have to subject myself to it. Then I tried to release the comment. Tried- I'll admit, I did some ruminating before letting it go...but then I wrote the words down on a piece of paper, went outside, and burned them. The symbolic act helped me feel a little lighter and to truly release the comment. I have no idea what happened with that post and I don't plan to go back and check.
There are a lot of people out there giving cheap-seat feedback. People who aren't in the game, who've never tried the things we're trying, who speak from a place of ignorance and distance. Personal attacks don't help us grow. We don't have to take them in.
Other people speak from wisdom, from care, in a spirit of fostering growth. They are the ones to listen to. The ones who help us cultivate self-trust rather than self-doubt. The ones who offer thoughtful questions and challenges that help us expand our thinking. The ones who give us specific suggestions to address a problem rather than trying to shame us.
May we learn to discern the cheap-seat feedback from the front-row or in-the-arena-with-us feedback and take in only what will serve. May we be discerning when we give feedback, not devaluing ourselves or others by shouting from the cheap seats.