“Henry! Where is this coming from?” you are probably asking, a little surprised at such impertinence. Let me ask, however, have you ever seen as the prettiest lady in the world, beautifully clad and resplendent in the most gorgeous dress? And I’m not talking of the ostentatious bedecking that ladies do nowadays, or of the indecent fashion meant to make a statement to the world. Instead, I am referring to beauty in its most natural and decent form. If you have seen such an angel of a lady, did you tell her she looked nice, that she was pretty that evening? Would you?
I was sitting in the library today, and then I stumbled upon this thought, and decided to pursue it to these lengths. I was able to notice that I was not especially frank when it came to my reaction about how ladies looked. I, however, hope to bank on your knowledge of the fact that beauty is such a subjective thing, and different people judge it differently. So why does this have to be a big deal? Well, it isn’t. Nonetheless, allow me explain what I mean.
As days go by, most people think more about themselves and little about anything or anybody else, so that today, if anyone gives something, they unconsciously expect the recipients of their kindness to be able to give it back. But does the world really work that way, and are we entitled to receive because we gave? When a man tells a lady she looks beautiful, I have noticed that most of the time, it usually has everything to do with the man and quite little to do with the lady. You look beautiful becomes a statement meant to affirm something in the man rather than in the lady, a statement mostly said in order for the man to get what he wants. That means that on most occasions, the statement is usually a lie. It could be what some people call gas-lighting. Is it right to praise someone when the praise is anything but sincere? I believe our aim should be to praise without flattering. Without lying. We lie when we tell people things we do not mean, things we do not believe to be true ourselves.
When it comes to crushes, it certainly is a much more complicated thing. Personally, I soon realized that I was usually a little beside myself when I was around a lady I thought I liked. I could tell all the ladies in the world how beautiful they were, but when there was something special about that lady in my heart, I rarely had the confidence to stand up to her and say those exact words I uttered freely to everybody else. Did that reveal anything? I think it did. It showed that whatever complement I put across was mostly determined by my own feelings and agenda, whatever they were, and rarely issued from a place of sincere appreciation. That’s so immature, and unfair, if you really think about it. I have since realized that all the anxiety that a man could ever have, in this case a good man; or a man who looks like a good man, mostly stems out from the fact that the man, despite his goodness, probably doesn’t have sincere intentions with the lady he thinks he likes. I hope you will now get what I mean when I say that a man becomes mature enough when he can commend his crush for her beauty, without any hints of trying to seduce her, or trying to make her fall in love with him.
In his popular book How To Win Friends and Influence People , Dale Carnegie explains that the way to get people to like you is to be first genuinely interested in them without trying to get them to be interested in you. Aha, Henry and friends, I bet you can now see why you have been messing up your chances since the time you tried to win any lady’s affection. It is imperative that we become humble enough to admit that our lives are not that interesting after all, and neither are we the good people we are pretending to be, and are in fact, otherwise. The reasonable thing to do is to be interested in the lady in question without having any qualms of whether she will be interested in you or not; something that more or less goes along the line, I like you but it doesn’t matter if you don’t like me, I like you for the both of us. I hope you are wise enough to never say out loud anything like that previous statement. And just to be clear, it’s a joke.
What then? Give but expect nothing in return. Are you willing to love someone fervently despite not knowing if they will ever love you back? If you aren’t, is it even love in the first place? When you see her next time, tell her she looks nice, and mean it. Then walk away, forget about her, and focus on more important things. Don’t deceive yourselves with thoughts that she likes you as well because of a smile she gave you when you complimented her. What matters is that you meant what you said. And to the ladies, if he looks nice, tell him, but be careful not to say this to the immature ones who will then cling at your skirts henceforth because they interpreted an innocent compliment for a romantic interest.