Praising Costs You Nothing, My Dear

If you like something... or someone, praise, because it's free after all... right?

Dear Reader,

It’s good to see me, isn’t it? No need to respond that was rhetorical. Well… I was dying to come here for so long and finally, I’m back! I don’t know how to make you feel what I'm feeling right now while typing these words. It just feels liberating, exciting, a bit like home coming and a lot of emotions I can’t describe in words. So, for those who didn’t know, I had taken a month long break from Substack for my end semester exams in college. Finally, got done with the last one today (i.e. 25th Feb) and after having the most stress free sleep of my life, my mind is ready to write here again. To be very honest, I think I’ve lost that spark in my writing these days cause it just doesn’t feel the same anymore. The joy I felt while writing a post in just an hour and publishing it sometime after midnight when I initially started writing here, has died down. Now, it just feels like a thing that I should do cause I have to do this. That doesn't mean, I don’t like writing here but you know, there’s something called zeal. I think I've lost that these days.

But anyways, you might have seen the title by now. It’s strange right? Right, it is a bit strange… just like me. But, if you think about it for a second, you’ll get it. When was the last time you were all praises for something, or someone? Today while reading someone’s post? Yesterday while you were talking to someone? A month ago, when something really good happened in your life and you started praising God? Or Never? Never, might be impossible unless you are a heartless person who has never felt the need to be thankful to someone, or happy for someone but… I digress. Today, in this post, I want to talk about praising and how it costs nothing for us. The only thing it might cost is maybe your time but my dear readers, don’t we waste our time in criticising somebody? Well…yes! We do and we love that, so what’s wrong in stealing few minutes from your ‘extremely busy’ schedule to praise someone? You might feel that you aren’t doing anything by writing or saying a sweet praise but to the one whom you’re praising, that might become the best day of their life.

So. let us begin with knowing what a praise is. A praise is when you express a warm approval or an appreciation for something or someone. You can be verbose about it, or just say a sweet word. It all depends on the intent. If you are praising someone out of love and honesty, you’re really doing a good deed. Because, false praises often end up becoming lies and sorta becomes useless. The other person might feel happy but… will you feel the same? I don’t think so. That is why, I would like all of you to be truly honest and open when it comes to praising someone. It’s not that you shouldn’t exaggerate what you really want to say, but let’s say you didn’t like something, but because you don’t want to break the other person’s heart, you just praised them and didn’t actually mean it. That is what I feel is quite problematic. It might not sound that big of a deal to you, cause at the end of the day, praises can never harm someone. But think like this, what if that person takes your praise seriously and becomes overconfident? Praises do make us feel like that. And it’s good to feel it after reading a genuine praise and, it’s equally bad and unfortunate when, it’s a false praise, cause it just gives us false hopes and nothing else.

We praise a lot of people in our lives. Be it online or in the real world. For the sake of our Substack community, I would like to discuss this matter in relation to how we react to posts as readers. Now, the best way to show love, support and approval to a post is liking it, right? If you liked reading a post on here, press the like button. Yes, that heart shaped button on the bottom left corner. Some might say, “Oh, it’s not that necessary! What can a like even do?” Well… a like can do a lot. All of you might feel this. Every time someone likes our post, it just feels so special. Like, that person could hear and understand us. They could resonate with our thoughts and opinions. We were able to make someone’s reading time beneficial and also interesting. I think about all these things whenever a person likes anything that I write. It’s such a simple gesture but holds so much power. And, maybe it helps a bit to enhance your post’s visibility but that’s a different thing. Liking someone’s post is the most basic form of praise one can do. So, I would like to request all of you to always press the like button for the post that you really liked. It’s very simple.

Then, there’s something called a restack. Now, some might say that it’s a feature to let the readers select something specific from the post that they like, and share it with others, which could act as a glimpse of the post that they can read if they find it interesting. For me, the act of doing restacks is a bit different. I think, it tells us that a reader really connected with a specific part of our post. They might have felt called out, or they could appreciate the writing style of that specific line. But, it goes deeper than that. Restacks tell us a lot about our readers. It can help us to understand their area of interests. Some people might appreciate the writing style, some might appreciate the humour, some might resonate with your hard feelings and some might just restack something to show their support. This is also a way to praise someone. It’s just a gesture. We are appreciating someone for their work by presenting that work in front of everyone else. So, restacks work as a promotional poster of sorts, which helps others to know about our post and then they read it too. That is why, I would request all of you to always restack those parts that connect with you. You can add a note to tell the reason for restack or just leave it on its own. It just works and it makes the writer really happy and proud of their work. The fact that someone read the entire post line by line and stumbled upon a specific part that they liked and restacked, tells us how devoted a reader is to us and our posts.

After liking and restacking some lines from a post, we also get the option to comment on it. Now, this is the time when you have to make a decision. Is the post I just read really worthy of commenting upon? Should I write a one word or one line comment and just call it a day? Should I write a lengthy essay praising each and everything I liked about the post? Should I add my own thoughts I had after reading it? I’m sure we think about all these things after reading a post. At least I do, because for me, it’s a big deal. I like to comment on almost every post that I read because I always have something to say about it. And, I tend to always be genuine while praising someone for their work because I feel, that my comment or anyone else’s comment for that matter, can really make the writer feel good about their work, and also feel understood and appreciated.

We don’t know what that writer must be going through personally and a sweet comment full of praises could maybe make their day. That is why, I never hold back while writing a comment full of praises for someone. I just want them to feel good about themselves and recognised for their talent and artistry. A few days ago, a good Substack friend of mine said to me, “Generosity should be your middle name.” Now, I won’t deny that but also can’t agree because I don’t think I'm generous but I do think that I'm thoughtful. There’s a lot of thought and honesty that I put in while writing a comment. They said this about me, because I praised them for their work, and how it was the best thing I read that day. And, that was the truth. Sorry, to toot my own horn but I think, I know how to write a good, and thoughtful comment that can be beneficial to the writer, and also give them that confidence to keep writing. Because trust me, reading a comment that praises you acts as a booster for a writer. The one writing it, might not feel that but the one reading it, feels a lot of emotions. The smile and excitement one feels, after seeing the notification for the email which says ‘New Comment on’ before their post title is just unmatchable.

Now, writing comments full of genuine praises and just a lot of good things about the writer and his brilliant mind is the best way to write a comment. You don’t have to be delusional or sound borderline manic while praising something. A meaningful comment is one that includes, the thoughts of the reader, their favourite parts from the post, the approval or criticism for any thing they read, any scope for improvement, appreciation for the writing style, their own experiences, and just a personal act of appraisal for the writer and their thought process. But, I have seen some people who like to include nature into their comments. Yes, I’m talking about those who write lines like, ‘this post is the air I breathe’, ‘the lines are like rivers’, ‘I could hear birds chirping’, ‘the words have magic in them’, ‘this is like a magazine I get delivered every week’, etcetera. Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong in praising like this. But, to me, it’s just not that meaningful. Like, what do you even mean when you say that the lines flow like rivers? Okay, maybe they meant that everything was flowing smoothly or whatever, but there’s definitely a better way to appreciate someone without writing about a nature’s landscape in the comments section. Even I have written a comment like this once, as a parody of all these stupid comments that I read on some of the posts here. Not gonna lie, while writing, you have to act like you are high or something to let your brain think like this. Because there’s no way, a sober person can come up with this. And lastly, to all those people who will attack me for criticising these kinds of comments, here's a really sweet message for you, “FUCK OFF!!”

So, this was all about praising from my side. I know this is a very different kind of a post you might get from me but, believe me, I really wanted to write something today and I had no other topic in my mind. I hope you have read this and are able to understand what I’m trying to say here. Praising costs you nothing, my dear, but it makes for a sweet, happy and memorable moment for the one, who is the receiver of that praise. So, always praise when you want to. Never hold back, cause you never know when your praises could save someone from ending their lives, or quitting something, or even feeling defeated because of a situation or circumstances. A praise has a lot of emotional power which boosts up the confidence and also proves to strengthen the emotional bond between the giver and the taker. I hope you liked reading this. Thank you for reading as always.

Farewell.