It’s the truth. I am one of those people who, if I had the ability to blush, would be blushing every time someone sends an unexpected compliment my way.
This isn’t because I have low self esteem,(I don’t) or that I wasn’t paid my fair share of compliments growing up(I was) but I can truly appreciate when someone pays me a genuine compliment, no matter what it’s about.
Of course I wasn’t always like this. It’s only natural that when you hear enough of the same compliments that they tend to lose their luster. In fact, you start to wonder why nobody can seem to compliment you on something more unique, and if those common compliments are really highlighting what few physical qualities you apparently seem to possess.
I know for me, I almost always hear something about my dimples or my smile, if not both. Every now and then it’ll be something a little more unexpected, like my eyebrows(…yeah) or eyelashes, but other than that, I’m not really caught off guard when someone says something nice about my appearance.
But recently I stopped taking all of that for granted. I can’t say I had some big epiphany after surviving some kind of face scarring accident or something close to that since I really just came to this conclusion after taking some time out to just think about it. Compliments, like many other things, are really just a privilege…a great privilege.. and I want to appreciate that privilege for all it’s worth.
The same thing goes for when girls tell me that they find me attractive/are attracted to me. When I was younger, of course I wanted to only hear that from women that I found to be attractive as well, and the more attractive they were, the bigger the boost to my ego as well as the compliment sticking with me longer. Nowadays, I equally appreciate the attention from any woman of any look or shape because it’s the meaning behind what they’re saying that sticks with me more.
Think about it. Most of us tend to base our level of attractiveness off of three things:
1.) What society overall deems as attractive
2.) What our interactions with the sex that we’re attracted to has told us about our level of attractiveness
3.) Our own sense of self worth
Whatever the average out of those three things are, is usually how people tend to look at themselves, at least in my opinion. So generally speaking, if your overall impression of yourself is that you’re cute, then being called anything other than that will automatically sound sketchy to you. This can play out in a couple different ways.
Ladies, I know you can probably understand this easier than men can. Let’s say you go to class one day and in your opinion you’re not looking as cute as you could be. Your hair is in a regular looking ponytail, no makeup of any kind, and you’re wearing a T shirt, some baggy sweatpants and some sandals. However, over the course of your morning, you seem to be attracting as much male attention as you would if you’d gone to class dressed to kill. Kind of strange right?
Not as much as you may think. YOU don’t feel like you should be getting as much attention because YOU aren’t feeling up to your usual level of attractiveness. What a lot of people don’t realize is that the people who find them attractive don’t necessarily hold them to the same standards of “what’s attractive” that they do.
If somebody thinks that you’re hot, then to them you’re just as hot in your pajamas as you are in your best wardrobe, and that’s the kind of attention that we should all be able to appreciate. Let’s not forget that not only are you not the most attractive person in current existence, but you may not even be the most attractive person around. My guy friends and I joke around all the time about girls who seem to think that they are just the finest thing ever and should be treated as such, but fail to realize that they’re really just one attractive girl in a city of attractive women.
And if you really want to see things the way I see it, I’m just one guy out of billions of guys around the world, one out of millions of guys in my own country, one out of thousands of guys in my own state, etc. Who am I to take for granted any girl who decides to either pay me a compliment and/or find me attractive? She could easily be attracted to every other guy but me.
Overall my point is that I’ve become an easy person to flatter because I’ve realized just how easily a compliment can pass me by. Just because a really attractive girl doesn’t think I’m hot that doesn’t mean that a less attractive that thinks I’m hot should have her opinion brushed aside. I can at least appreciate being found attractive by somebody because I know that there’s people out there who would like to be found attractive by anybody, and I’m blessed for every year in which I do not fall into that category.
