A solid rock by wind is undisturbed.
The wise by praise and blame are unperturbed.
—The Dhammapada - Chapter 6, Verse 81
“Perturbed” is an understatement for how being blamed makes me feel. The hair trigger on that reaction is better nowadays, but I’m still not quite the stoic I’d like to be in that department. No surprises there, but my natural response to praise, however, was an enlightening realization when it came to light. Instead of letting it go to my head to inflate my ego as you might expect, whenever I received a genuine compliment, I’d swat it aside with self-deprecating humor. I realized this, ironically enough, during a stand-up comedy class.
I happened to do particularly well performing a routine in progress and successfully made the class laugh. When I returned to my seat, the friend next to me laid her hand on my shoulder and sang my praises, saying, “Someday, I’ll be able to look back and tell everyone that I knew you when you were just getting started.” She, of course, meant this as an endearing compliment that implied my success, but I immediately quipped back with a tag-on, saying, “…and now he lives under the bridge downtown!” Which, of course, implied my own failure.
We both laughed, but as soon as we did, I realized I did this sort of thing with all genuine compliments thrown my way. It was a reflex to deflect them because, on a subconscious level, praise was unfamiliar, and therefore undeserved.
My reaction made me wonder how long I’d been doing that for. My whole life, it seemed, upon further reflection. I plan to publish the root experience in a more detailed book later on, so I won’t dive into it all here, but the short of it is that my childhood brain had been wired to feel praise was foreign, so I’d dodge what felt undeserved in that way.
The lesson from The Dhammapada above is a simple and clear reminder not to be perturbed when faced with these kinds of stimuli, although possibly not in the way the quote was originally intended.