These are excerpts from the author’s book “Deep,” which contains eight of his small books published in the form of Wisdom Literature covering different aspects of life: Facing troublemakers, dealing with pain, personal financial issues, gastronomy, reading, criticizing, inspiring, and feeling always good to go.

Series 5: Reading.

Criticizing Life

• Human civilization is built through criticism, not by accepting things as they are. Even what is described as destructive or negative criticism has an important role. Inspiring others with fruitful criticism leads to ideas and actions to address what could be a defect or to enrich civilization with absolutely new ideas and actions.

• We all tend to automatically criticize everything we receive through any of our senses, but we don’t usually express our criticism directly, even to ourselves.

• Determining whether or not you like what you received is the entrance to the process of criticism, which culminates in determining precisely why you like or dislike what you criticized.

• If you don’t own everything in life, you certainly own the commentary on it all. Criticize all experiences and events that you pass through or see, and let them inspire you as best they can.

• Events and experiences that provoke you strongly are valuable opportunities for criticism. Don’t miss these opportunities, but be sure to keep your balance and calm as you scrutinize them for criticism so that you get the most benefit possible.

• When you criticize anything in life, you cannot completely get rid of your personal view. You are not supposed to get rid of your personal view, but try to understand the motives behind what you are criticizing so that you can formulate your point of view objectively.

• Do not be upset when some experiences or events go through you again and you find yourself criticizing them in a way that is different or even contradictory to the way you previously criticized them. No experience or event repeats itself in the same way. You criticize events and experiences in light of the variables surrounding them, including your culture and your constantly changing moods.

• Life is our greatest mentor that we cannot transcend. We should criticize our experiences and events as being part of life and not as life itself. It is not wise to start a losing battle with life, during which we claim that we will experience it outwardly and inwardly. Life is not only more cunning than us, but it is much greater than what we think when we are overwhelmed by vanity.

• Big experiences and events stop everyone. The brilliant critic of life is the one who skillfully ponders the minute details of experiences and events, no matter how similar they seem, to discern the differences and draw specific criticism for each event and experience.

• It is not just a matter of looking at the full part of the cup. You peak in life’s critical skills when you come out of almost every experience, no matter how harsh it is, more confident and receptive to life.