30 Eylül 2017, Cumartesi
saat: 08:32
I had an insanely busy week: work was nuts with lots of grading & giving weekly feedback, meetings, "mandatory" social activities, guest lectures and a couple things lined up at nights that resulted in getting home pretty late. I kind of floated around like a stress monster for the most part, and had a few moments of feeling overwhelmed and anxious.
Fast forward to today: I was powering through the dining hall on a mission to get food and go back to the office as soon as possible. I stopped by the cashier to pay for my lunch, and the lady who worked there told me that my outfit looked so nice today. I smiled (it is impossible not to smile after someone compliments you!), thanked her, and sat down at my table. Then a lunch lady I'd never seen before who came to my table and said “you are so pretty.” It caught me off guard. I didn’t know her. She didn’t know me. She didn't start a conversation, or expect anything in return. She just thought something really nice and complimentary about me and decided to actually say it loud, then just went back to her day. I know it may seem like a trivial comment, but those simple words from two ladies made me feel really great, especially in the midst of a total shit-storm of a week.
Usually, I'm my own worst critic (I literally called mom to ask if my outfit looked like "an egg" this morning, as I was wearing my yellow dress) and I'm often very hard on myself (I complained to a senior colleague that my students were still conflating presidential regimes with two-party systems and I was falling behind & feeling like a failure - but then he told me after 30 years of teaching, he still run into the same problem each semester and I should take it easy), but this lunchtime made me think about the power of compliments: how encouraging they are, and how much they can transform a person’s day. Never underestimate the power of kind words y'all!
Note to self: Give someone a compliment. Give someone a smile. Even the smallest kind gesture can make someone’s day.
