Wonderful Yes. Beautiful Not Really🤔

Hey I’m Gabriel, a creative artist (we all are). My style of art is proudly called. “The art of consistent inconsistency” As the name suggests… I am super inconsistent and I guess my three readers already know that by now. I could try and change that and be consistent but I just don’t want to. I like it here.

That aside. Let’s start this post now. Of late I’ve been very cautious with compliments. I downplay them alot. And it’s weird, because it puts me in some sort of dilemma. The dilemma arises because of a quote I used to like and use a lot…”anyone who downplays a compliment wants to hear it twice” I can’t remember where I got the quote from but it was cool then and I used it everytime.

Later I came to realize that, compliments are enslaving. Not only are they enslaving but they are fictional. They are unreal. With a generation that prides itself in being real, we sure give out too much compliments. Apologies if I’m yapping, let me try to explain why I came to the conclusion that compliments are enslaving and unreal.

First off..reality is not an idea or judgement. For you to come up with a compliment you bring an idea and judgement. Let’s say I meet a girl and say “damn you are beautiful” .. it’s a good compliment fair enough. But for me to give out that compliment I had an idea of what beautiful is supposed to be… let’s say thick ass, nice fashion, symmetrical face and whatnots. And I judged her off of my ideas, lucky her she passed all my judgement.

What if I meet her some day later and I notice something different..the ass is not thick anymore or her fashion is super terrible or God forbid her face is not so symmetrical. Everything is against my ideas and judgement of beautiful. I’m honest but I’m also not heartless. That means I wouldn’t compliment her. And I also wouldn’t say “damn you are ugly” It seems everything would go on fine right? Wrong.

Assuming on our first encounter..she took the compliment to heart(which most of us do btw). It gave her some thrill to know she’s beautiful. On the second encounter she would notice something different. I didn’t compliment her this time. Now comes the tension, insecurity and anxiety. She’ll go look at herself in the mirror analyzing whats wrong.

But the reality is. She was neither beautiful nor ugly. Just the same way you are just you. “But we are all beautiful” Are we? We are not. Beauty is an idea. An idea that can be distorted. You can never distort reality. And the opposite of beautiful is ugly btw. They exist together. If we are all beautiful then there wouldn’t be ugly. There wouldn’t even be compliments about beautiful because we wouldn’t need to remind ourselves.

When it comes to some topics in life, there are friends who view me as ‘smart’. They compliment me too and they make it known they have labelled me that… it’s enslaving because at first everytime I was around them or had an online conversation with them I had to behave in such a way that fit with the label ‘smart’ and that’s not freedom. That’s slavery. I’m not being myself. Until I dropped taking compliments to heart did I become free. Now I’m neither smart or dumb. I’m not good or bad. I’m just me. And you are just you.

The dilemma arises when you keep downplaying compliments. People think “ooh he wants to hear me say it twice”.. Now I guess I’ll just nod to the compliments and move on. But that on it’s own makes them see and experience me with some kind of filter. To me compliments are enslaving and to you giving out the compliment makes you see me with a filter. The moment you compliment me and we both get attached to the compliment we seize to experience reality. I am Me and you are just You..no labels.

Sidenote: I’ve been thinking about starting a podcast when I get 100 readers. I know “consistency” but I don’t want to be trapped in that consistency struggle where I write even when I don’t feel like it. Anyway we’ll get there when we get there.