75. The Critical Life

In its everyday usage, to criticize something is to find fault with it. But in the world of literature and art, to criticize is to inquire into a work. Rather than focusing exclusively on faults, the aim is to explore the work broadly and see what might be found in it.

To inquire into a work is to pose questions and discover how the work responds. It is to posit interpretations and meanings — typically nonexclusive ones that expand our view of the work rather than confine it to strict boundaries. Criticism of this kind is deeply resistant to boundaries. It resists anything that limits, anything final. It remains open to the arrival of a future audience, one that will see the work in a new way, who will pose a new set of questions revealing something as of yet unseen. It means both exploring and investigating, taking both the broadest available view and the narrowest, reaching as far as possible into the wide unknown and diving deeply into the details.

To approach all of life from a critical perspective is to be open to all of its possibilities and to subject every last experience to questioning. It is to accept every part of your experience and explore what might exist in it. It is to offer meanings when they arise and to add value and purpose to everything you see and do. It is to undermine anything that might limit or restrict and to support the possibility of growth and transcendence. It is to share in all of this with other people, to consider their interpretations and the results of their inquiries. It is to remain open to everything that comes to you, to receive and appreciate it as though it were part of you, and to incorporate it into yourself. It is to live as a fully dynamic and creative being in every moment of your existence.