Taking compliments

What is it about compliments that make them so hard to accept? And sometimes hard to give?

The dynamics of the relationship with the other person, the desire not to seem false, the embarrassment of saying something that may make the other person uncomfortable...

All these reasons that stop people from doing what will ultimate make the other person aware that they are a great person just seem so silly.

I mean there are counterarguments to this (surprisingly so) because apparently if you make a person aware of certain qualities that you perceive them to have, they may either externally or internally actually start to argue either with you ("No, I'm not really like that...") or with themselves ("How can they think that I'm like that...? I don't have those qualities") and in some ways that self-argumentation will lead the person who is complimented to think less of themselves. I suppose my point here is that sometimes, you could be highlighting something to the person that may be sensitive to them for various reasons (and I feel like I read something about it but I went into the rabbit hole of the interwebs and couldn't find anything so perhaps I'm misguided here).

I suppose a somewhat odd example is that people tell me I have a nice butt. I know I do but honestly, there are a lot of sociological/gender politics at play with that because it's my body and I may like it, but why do other people have to tell me (i.e. point out to me) that it's nice? Why are people looking to begin with? Especially with the butt being a sexualized object of a woman's body, what kinds of implications are there in someone pointing that out to me?

Compliments can backfire on people in that sense because some people don't want to be identified with what seems to be their strong suit (and here, I'm talking less about physical qualities) and I wonder if there's something wrong with that.

Perhaps what I'm getting at is this sense of acceptance of the qualities that people have of themselves. If I'm smart, if I'm boring, if I'm whatever, isn't that simply who I am? If I am the person I am and I accept the qualities I have, what people say, whether they be compliments or insults, shouldn't be hard to accept. That's why I've come to realize when people say "You have a nice butt," I don't think too much of what it says about me (aside from whatever gender politics there are behind it), but I acknowledge that it is a quality that I have and I know I have and I am thankful that the person has noticed it too.

"Thank you."

Now, I think this kind of gets into this idea of self-perception. The reality of the self is this: one has good qualities and bad qualities. Those qualities also run the spectrum of being the epitome of that quality and perhaps being the average of such quality. What I mean is that when you say someone is caring, they can be the pure embodiment of everything that you think a caring person should be, or they can simply be someone who occasionally displays caring-ness. The unfortunate truth with this is that if you've used other people's judgments to define yourself and you meet someone who is more caring than you, there is a minor identity crisis and then there is animosity towards person who caused this crisis. However, one cannot expect to the be epitome of every quality they have. In the end, we are who we are. Other people may have some influence to shape the self, but if one should be active in choosing how one is shaped (or another way of looking at it, is one should choose how one perceives oneself) so that one can strive to bring out the best in oneself.

There often seems to be a disparity between the ideal self and reality, which is why women sometimes buy clothes that are too small for them. Their ideal self is not the person they see in the mirror. People say it all the time too as an excuse for not being their ideal. "If only I..., then I would be...." Perhaps in accepting the reality of who we are (the habits we have, the personality quirks that exist within us, etc.), can we start to also accept or reject other people's assessment of us (which come in the form of a compliment/insult).