I was driving my sister and a group of friends to the movies one night when I heard it. An exchange between two of the said passengers in which one offered the other a compliment, and the recipient blatantly denied the praise she was given.
Now, this isn’t the first time I’ve heard this textbook disregard for another person's good intentions. Shoot, if I’m honest I’ve been on both sides of this conversation, and I’m not sure why it is that we so quickly shoulder the praise and immediately jump to our own defense in strict denial.
It’s like a disease that spreads from one compliment to another. Like, “Hey that’s a nice shirt,” “Oh, this old thing?" "I love your hair,” “Oh, thanks I woke up like this, it looks awful.” Somehow we manage to turn a compliment into a personal put down. No one wins in this situation.
The aforementioned exchange was about a shirt, but imagine for a second the following scenario. Just this last week Hillary Clinton accepted the Democratic nomination for President of the United States. No matter your political affiliation, it is a fact that Hillary is the first female nominated for president by a major political party. Now, upon this fact she has received much praise, but if she reacted to these comments in the same way we so often do when someone compliments our clothes or our hair we would think it almost insulting.
If in conclusion of her acceptance speech she muttered something along the lines of, “Yes, I am the first female nominee, but it really isn’t that big of a deal,” or “Oh, stop it, it really wasn’t that hard,” imagine the backlash she would get.
Her fight for equality is a culmination of many different fights for equality and if she shook off this praise, she would be doing a disservice to everyone who has struggled for the same or a similar cause.
Instead of either of the hypothetical responses I offered up here, Hillary opted for the reaction we should all come to make habitual, she simply said, “Thank you.” There it is, the cure for this disease. Two words. Thank. You.
Saying thank you to someone’s compliment does not make you a stuck up attention hog. If anything it just validates the other person’s good deed. You in two words change the mood of the situation, change the momentum of the conversation, and perform a good deed yourself. Even if it’s a compliment about your clothing or your hair, your image is still a representation of all the hard work and sacrifice that has gone into making you the person you are.
In a very hypothetical and round about way, the conclusion is: just say thank you. In a world that is as scary and as full of hate as ever, we could use a little more love, even if it’s completely random.
