The pattern is external before it is internal. Somebody is always standing at the far end holding the red pen: a father who did not answer questions, a supervisor who returns the work, a colleague who says the thing is not ready. The native experiences this as obstruction from outside and reacts either by talking faster to get past it or by falling silent altogether. Both responses concede the point. The objector is voicing an internal standard the native has not yet claimed as theirs.
Negotiation and contracts bring the opposition out in daylight. The native either signs without reading and discovers the clause later, or reads with such suspicion that the deal dies on the table. Correspondence goes unanswered for weeks and is then answered at exhausting length. In marriage the split often runs along the same line, one partner supplying the ideas and the other supplying the objections, with both privately certain they are carrying the harder half of the arrangement.
Resolution means holding both ends at once: producing the idea and testing it in the same head, on purpose, before anyone else gets to it. Once this is done the external critics lose most of their power and often lose interest. Such natives make first-rate editors, auditors and examiners themselves, having spent thirty years on the receiving end. The residue is a habit of expecting an objection to every sentence, which makes for careful work and slightly wearing company.
What It Gives
- ◆sharp eye for the flaw
- ◆arguments built to withstand attack
- ◆excellent editorial judgement
- ◆learns fast from opposition
What It Costs
- ◆criticism located only outside
- ◆correspondence avoided then overdone
- ◆talking past a valid objection
This is one line of a whole chart. The rest of it — every placement, house and aspect at once — is a birth date away.
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