so, as someone who--to put it charitably--could get a better handle on his life I am sort of emotionally susceptible these days both to critique and to praise. I've been trying to get a handle on it and just learn to take both in stride. To that end I've come across this amazingly on-point quote:→[More:]

Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about. And since we know least about ourselves, we are ready to believe all that is said about us. Hence the mysterious power of both flattery and calumny.... It is thus with most of us: we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay.

Eric Hoffer

So Brilliant!! A++ would quote again