GIVING UP CONTROL: ACCEPTING PRAISE COMES AT A PRICE

Daming with praise. It's a phrase I've heard over the years but never gave it much thought. That is until I began noticing some odd outcomes in Lodges. I found the mathematics wasn't adding up.  Let me explain. A few years ago I sat through a performance that pressed on my good manners. It was obvious the person had not prepared. Yet praise flowed copiously after the final act. Maybe this was my apple falling from the tree inspiring me to understand the question of gravity?  If the feeble effort was enough to gain praise, why over a generation were expectations low?  This question took me along one of those pathways full of aha moments.  One interesting fork had me deciding if praise and encouragement were the same. They are not. The latter builds on effort and audacity. The former is an end- perfection needs no further effort. One encourages effort. The other concludes the opposite conclusion. It made me think, praise is a luxury few of us can afford.It seems cruel to think that there is a problem with praise, but there is. In a summary of his work Solitude: A Singular Life in a Crowded World and The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We've Lost in an Age of Constant Connection  The author Michael Harris raises some interesting points. "If you believe the praise, you are letting other people control what you think about your work because by this point, so intimately invested in that work- you're also letting those people control what you think about yourself."  Is accepting praise making me fraught to deal with the inevitable criticism? Is that why the objective comment is rarely tabled?   I'm not going to say I know the answers. I will say it helps we make sense of the performance of Freemasonry. If the Master passes inferior work, who is at fault when the cathedral is poorly built?