The Compliment January 31, 2023

In the past month or two, I found myself to be the recipient of unexpected compliments, and I was surprised and also quite delighted to hear them. It all started, I think, at Christmas dinner at Marcia’s house. Marcia and I met each other 50 years ago in an engineering graphics class at Penn State. We became friends and then roommates both in college and in graduate school at MIT, and we had married and migrated to California at about the same time. During dinner, Marcia mentioned to the group that I was the best mathematician she knew. I nearly fell out of my chair. It is true that I used to be very good in math, but surely Marcia herself is equally gifted or has known others who must have surpassed me. I was deeply humbled and also so grateful to be acknowledged in this way. 

Then last week at Bach Choir practice, the new soprano sitting next to me learned over not once, but twice, to say, “You have excellent posture.” “Oh, thank you!” I twice replied. I then discovered she is a Pilates instructor, which made the complement all the sweeter. 

As readers of the blog might know, I am an Athena, and one of my mini-goals in life was to encourage (or should I say “pester”) my dear friend Jeannette until she got her will in order, which she finally did. The other day she said, “Jane, I have to thank you for really pushing me to do this – it is such a relief.” 

Giving and receiving praise is such a delightful human activity, and I was kind of startled by my response to all this. Is it possible that I’ve been receiving such compliments all along, but that I’ve been too low to really appreciate them? My online neuropsych and Buddhist guru Rick Hanson claims that we humans are “Velcro for bad and Teflon for good”. Perhaps all this work I did in 2022 to develop new stability, including to savor the good, has enabled me to be a better recipient of others’ generosity. Bring it on! I’m ready to hear it! 

And a coda: Last night, at rehearsal for the Marin Symphony, I whispered to the singer next to me, “I’m really enjoying sitting next to you. You are keeping me on track.” As we gathered our belongings at the end of rehearsal, with tears in her eyes, she said, “Thank you for telling me that.”