One Bad

Great article. I always enjoy your columns. You say what I’m thinking! So go the kind and generous Facebook comments from friends after I posted a recent column to my homepage. They are the type of comments that make you hope you are half as good as your friends think you are. I’m appreciating the encouragement until I follow a link where someone reposted my article and there it is- a critical comment.

Let me just say, I do this for fun. I do it for the enjoyment of the written word. And I do it to get all of these thoughts out of my head so I have room for more. I’m hardly a professional, so I’m not hardened to being judged about the quality of my work. Worse, this comment from a total stranger wasn’t about the quality of my work at all – it was about me, personally. Suffice to say it stung enough to erase every positive word that had come before or would ever come after. I call it the mysterious power of the “One Bad”.

You all know what I mean by the One Bad. It can apply to any instance where we are flooded with flowing affirmations, until we hit the brick wall that is the One Bad, making us second guess everything. Leading me to wonder why one critical voice, even if spoken in a whisper, is heard so much louder than hundreds of encouraging words.

I’m running the Boston marathon! Again? When are you going to stop? I lost 5 pounds! You are way too skinny. I got a promotion! I thought your company was going out of business. I’m going to write a book! Everyone thinks they can write a book.

Even when we know we can’t possibly please everyone we still try. Especially at work, where we are forced into a caustic camaraderie with people we would never normally spend the bulk of our lives with. While we can sometimes make lifelong friends in the process, there’s always at least One Bad. My One Bad came in the form of an anonymous note left on my desk a few years back that went something like this “Everyone thinks you play favorites”. Even knowing immediately whom the note was from and why he left it (it had to do with my displeasure at his taping dead flies to his computer terminal), it still bugged me. Why did he have to use the word EVERYONE? The friendly interrogations that followed brought disbelief and confirmation that the source was as suspected and speaking only for him, but it still stung.

While you expect to not have happy customers in the business world, even the volunteer world is not immune. As I basked in the glow of the finest event I had ever had the pleasure of volunteering on, raising nearly a quarter of a million dollars for a beloved charity, the comment I remember is “So-and-so (name withheld to protect the mean) said they heard it was a disaster and no one came”, making me 2nd guess the success that seemed so obvious, and causing me to wonder if this was Two Bad - as in ‘so-and-so’ plus the person who made sure I heard the hurtful comment- or a thinly disguised One Bad, where the person implying that others are saying bad things is the true source of discontent.

Lately it seems the One Bad is a daily occurrence. In my excitement about an upcoming trip, I ask everyone about my intended destination, even though the odds are that the more I ask, the closer I’ll get to the One Bad, which sounded something like this: “Watch out for the dog filth everywhere”. Great, thanks!

And as I go online to look up the address of a local restaurant that got great reviews, someone had attached a photo of cockroaches to the posting board that unfortunately did what it was intended to do. It made me second guess the pages of rave reviews and eat once again at my tried and true spot.

The worst thing about the One Bad, is that it is so darn effective. One person’s negativity can drop our spirits like an elevator on the way to the penthouse that suddenly plunges to the basement. And if you look closely, you’ll see the One Bad is overjoyed to watch your pride and happiness drain to pain, happy to see you as miserable as they are- at least for that moment.

The truth is, we probably aren’t as great as our friends think we are, but we are not as bad as the One Bad would have us believe either. And if following my lifetime dream to write makes me vulnerable to criticism from others, in the long run its all good- even the One Bad.