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mackenzian

Keisha E. McKenzie | communication | systems | social good

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Clearing the cache

Boxes of stacked sepia classic photographs, in rows of three. A uniformed white man is in the center image. Above and to his right are women.
Photo credit: Fabien Barral

Every so often, one of my websites starts to show errors and the technicians “clear the cache.” It did that again last week.

Cache files are created by apps to store commonly used information so it doesn’t have to be generated or downloaded again.” —Lowell Heddings

Over time, browsers accrue a lot of that temporary data, text, images, styles, and code. A growing cache is something like the brain’s memories, storing each experience, hardening around habits, building us shortcuts as we navigate through life every day.

It’s important to remember carefully. And in interpersonal relationships, it can also be useful to flush cached memories from time to time.

Fixing others’ in the past can mean missing who they are in this moment.

For convenience, we might fix somebody in time in a period where their handiwork caused negative results for us. Our cache might justify us in feeling resentment, even after we’ve resolved the issue or mitigated its outcomes.

The cache can just as easily contain pleasant memories as unpleasant ones, and we might be even more reluctant to clear our cache of them because they feel good. Yet there’s still a major benefit to shifting from memory to experience, from past to present.

In the present moment is the only place that real relationship happens.

No matter how much a parent looks warmly at an old photo of their adult child, the version of the child that the photo captured is forever gone.

Even if those parents struggle to view their adult child without nostalgia, it’s only as they make room in their perceptions for the children they have today that they stand the chance of relating person-to-person rather than person-to-projection.

And none of us can compete with others’ projections about us.

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How detractors can move you forward

Expect criticism. If you’re doing something worth doing, know that an effort that matters will draw detractors.

Don’t reverse-engineer this principle, though: no matter how tempting it might be to shrug “Must be doing something right!”, criticism isn’t validation all by itself. You’ll need to actually assess your work to prove it worthy.

But if what you’re doing is worth doing, there will be those who think it shouldn’t be done at all and others who, like the moderate ministers of Birmingham, Alabama, object to your method, timing, or goals.

Listen for the message behind the criticism.

A black man with close cropped hair and full beard draws on a canvas or paper with a marker. Photo credit: Death to the Stock Photo. Used under license.
If you’re doing something worth doing, it will draw detractors. (Licensed image.)

Black Enterprise recently asked Alice Walker about how she’s weathered criticism over the course of her life:

You come into this world with your assignment and you kind of know that there are certain things that you will be given the understanding to try to accomplish for the common good.

And that’s your job, and you just take it on like any other job. And then you figure out that many people won’t like it, and they’ll try to stop you, and they may stop you, but that’s their job. It’s not your job.

Know your job. And know that there’s no advance without detractors, no action without concern trolling, and no innovation without critics.

Crowds don’t gather to stare at an empty wall: reactive attention is a sign that something is afoot. So get clear about what that something is, and then do your part to pour substance into it. That’s how criticism can move you forward.