Gracious doesn't come naturally to me and I tend to be suspicious or self-conscious when someone says something nice. I glow on the inside but on the surface I'm tense and embarrassed, fearful of letting them know how much it means to me and always unsure that I've earned it. Praise, I've come to learn, is an easy gift to give but a hard one to receive.
Of course, it's a lot of work to keep myself insulated, and it never occurred to me that someone else might feel the same until I heard from my cousin, who it seems, shares this very same feeling. This opened the possibility that there might even be others - who knows, there might be a community or an army of them - who struggle with it - and it was a surprising thought. Who we are and what we show to the world is so seldom what we really are, I thought, how many people are keeping the same secrets I am? How many others feel as frail, as insecure, as foolishly self-aware or as shy as I do? How really different are we all?
Sometimes, a wise and very dear friend wrote to me, You just have to tolerate the fact that people love you.
So......
Thanks.
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