Getting compliments

I had a walk with Frida, the girl I met at the Indians place. She showed me around the park here, which was nice. I had to came on my prejuidice that there isn’t that much light pollution and that you can see the stars here in Sweden. Because here in the city, it is as worse as in the cities in the Netherlands. Too bad, but also another reason for traveling further.

When I got home I thought about how we give compliments to each other – sorry, the introduction has hardly any relation with the following I think. When you’ve worked together with someone and you like the way the other did something you say, “you’re good at .. communicating” for example. I’m brought up by my environment to reply with “thanks”, but I never really adapted to that, always found it a bit strange. I mostly mumbled something like “yeah” or “ok”. Then after some time people around me started saying that I should learn to receive compliments. Now I suddenly knew why I never got around that, why it feels strange to do so.

It is not something I can be thankful for. It is just something I do, something I’m capable of. If someone says that I did something well then that is more a thing someone else notices which for me is already clear, is a normal way of life.
And I also thought this might very well be related to the individualistic culture we grow up with in the west. A culture where personal achievements lead to a higher status, to getting a job, to performing well in society. This makes that when somebody tells you that you’ve done something good, you thank them because they, so to say, ‘gave’ you an achievement. Because the people around you attribute things to you, you climb up the social ladder, you do or don’t get the job.

Something I never could understand. I do understand why now, but I still don’t like it.

– I went to get something to drink –

Ah, now I also now what the relation with the introduction is. Nice how this getting out is helping you to remember things.

Before we went out for a walk I put my backpack in my apartment because I just came from the university. I showed my apartment and she said something like that it was nice. I think I answered with “yes”. At that moment I thought about this getting ‘compliments’. The nice apartment to me was also just something normal. Of course it is something that I created and thus something that someone can compliment me on, but still it is just who I am, what I create around me.

Tags: compliments, culture, frida, friends, influence, language, meaning, walking

Categories: an emotional journey, an intellectual journey