Random compliments are a huge mood booster and can make your day, but there are some that truly stand out from the rest and stay with you forever.
One such compliment I received is one I will not soon forget.
I have often gotten compliments on how I look younger than I actually am – no complaints there.
But one individual at work was slackjawed when I revealed to him my age.
He told me I was "well-pickled."
Aww, shucks. I'll take it!
Curious to hear about the comments that stayed with strangers, Redditor wubdubbud asked:
"What is the best compliment someone ever told you?"
All About Looks
Who doesn't like being complimented on their looks? Not these Redditors.
Exceptional Corneas
"I was having an eye test, and I was on a machine that measured the pressure of your eyeballs. Mine came up elevated, so the 70-year-old optician took another reading, and just said, 'miss, you have the thickest corneas I have ever seen.' And for the rest of the appointment, he just kept telling me how great my corneas are."
Love Note
"A random guy at a coffee shop wrote, 'I just wanted you to know, I think you're EXTREMELY CUTE!' on a scrap of paper and dropped it on my table as he walked out."
"It's still taped to my monitor and this happened in 1998."
ETA: pic of note - Note https://imgur.com/gallery/eVjlqyO"
Beyond Expectations
"I thought you'd be taller in real life; you have such a powerful presence online. It's still there...I just thought you'd be taller"
"Idk about best, but it was one of the most unique."
Heartwarming
These compliments are the ones that get you choked up harder than any Hallmark card.
A Child's Approval
"My 6 year old said 'Im proud of you, daddy' one day after a long day of school and work. He had just learned what 'proud' meant and was using it a lot, but this one hit differently."
The Devoted Pet Owner
"'If I were a cat I would want to be your cat.' Spoken by the veterinarian after my little furry guy lost his battle with lymphoma."
"So many people don't visit their sick pets when they have to stay at the vet. I came every day to sit with the cat and pet him and feed him out of my hand. It makes a difference. A lot of animals don't understand they're in pet-hospital. They think they're being abandoned and get really depressed. The extra love didn't save my fur kid but it bought him time and he knew he was loved."
"The vet even made a donation to a veterinary school in my cat's name. (It's rare but it happens). About the sincerest compliment it's possible to pay."
Comforting Companion
"My gf earlier this evening told me 'I feel safe when I' m with you.' As an addict in recovery, that is a huge one to hear. Very humbling. Probably made my whole next week."
Words From A Father
"I'm proud of you."
"---my dad, after I managed to get my bipolar disorder stabilized, built a life for myself, and repaired the fractured relationships with my family members."
"I didn't realize how much I craved his approval until I finally got it."
Appreciation From Unexpected Places
Just because you don't know them doesn't mean they don't deserve to hear your praises.
The Stranger
"Someone once told me, a stranger, that I seemed like a good person. For some reason coming from a stranger it felt really nice."
Happy Car
"When I was in college, I put those silly reindeer antlers on my car at Christmas time."
"One day after class, I got a note on my window saying that they love my car & it cheered them up every time they saw it. I have no idea who left it. I still have it."
"A couple years later, I sanded down my car and covered it in chalkboard paint. I leave out chalk for people to draw. Now I get smiles (and strange looks) all the time!"
Elderly Praise
"An old lady on the bus told me women would only dream of having hair as beautiful as mine. I'm a guy."
You never know if anyone is struggling on any given day, so it's good to know that a simple positive acknowledgment can make a huge difference.
So the next time you're impressed by someone's hair-did or by their accomplishments, let them know.
We could all use an extra ray of sunshine these days.
Redditor r3tr0gam3r83 wanted to hear about which realizations in life have left people SHOOK, so they asked:
"What is something that blew your mind once you realized it?"
Avocados are not vegetables.
They're fruits, berries to be exact.
Like what?!?!
Colleagues
GIF by Bud LightGiphy"Sometimes it is more important to like your colleagues than the actual job."
"I had shi**y jobs with the most amazing colleagues and had shi**y colleagues and the most amazing job. I'd pick the first every time."
chr989
Star Trekking
"That you could legitimately travel at warp speed through the center of galaxies and never run any real risk of hitting a star. That’s how spread out space really is."
justanotherguyhere16
"Also, galaxies, stars, and even the Universe is constantly moving. I think time travel has been invented, but they can’t figure out the 'space' part of it.
"Yes, they can travel back in time, but relatively speaking, they can’t figure out how to navigate to the part of the planet they want to reach. So when they travel back in time, it’s relative to where they currently are, and end up not moving through space, thus ending up in the middle of an empty vacuum."
theknights-whosay-Ni
Jaws is Old
"That sharks predated the rings of Saturn."
BeardedDominant
"Sharks also developed the immune system that ended up in both dinosaurs/birds and mammals."
csiz
"We don’t know that. We can’t say for certain that the rings are only 100 million years old. It’s still debated."
The_Kek_5000
"I'm pretty sure that sharks are older than trees."
Cayderent
From the Trees
"One day I sat on a tram, passing a river. There was a duck in a tree. I realized I'd never seen ducks in trees. No one else seemed to notice, but I was puzzled. Now whenever I come across something that seems intuitive but I have never considered I call it a duck in a tree."
Ol_Pasta
"This realization happened to me this past year. We apparently have a family of wood ducks in one of the big trees in our yard. Our neighbor said she has seen a duck walking around on a branch. I made it 37 years without knowing some ducks can roost in trees. My wife caught a video of the mama leading like eight ducks into the field next to our house. We aren't even near water."
jwbourne
Artistic Timeline
Confused Eminem GIFGiphy"Pablo Picasso and Eminem were both alive at the same time."
leebon427
"I’d bet a lot of people think Picasso is a Renaissance artist."
editormatt
I admit it. I'm one of those people. Pablo and Marshall, in one lifetime.
New facts are fun.
The New World
Design Loop GIF by xponentialdesignGiphy"They were colonizing the Wild West at the same time as they were building skyscrapers in Manhattan. I always think of them taking place eighty to a hundred years apart. It's wild."
Emilayday
Oh the Power
"Nuclear power plants are just steam power plants that use nuclear reactions to heat the water. There's no fancy magic extracting energy directly from nuclear material. They just boil water and spin a turbine."
RenaKunisaki
"Most electrical generation is spinning a turbine. Photovoltaic solar power is pretty much the only exception, and it's not the only form of solar power. There's solar thermal power, which uses mirrors or lenses to concentrate the heat of the sun to make steam and turn a turbine."
Brawndo91
The Empire
"The Roman Empire fully fell less than 50 years before the discovery of the new world."
South-by-north
"The Romans also had copper wire, magnets, and battery acid. They could have invented electricity hundreds of years before it was actually discovered. But they didn't. The wire was used for jewelry, the magnets as lodestones, and the battery acid was used to clean the rust off of swords."
Kahzgul
"RIP Byzantine Empire. 1453 never forget."
crossbowman44
The Witness
"Owl‘s silent flight. I mean I always knew that but a while ago was the first time I actually witnessed it. Owl came flying towards me and landed only a few feet away and you couldn‘t hear anything. Crazy."
Zealousideal-You-324
"I saw a barn owl swoop down and catch a mouse while hiking at night, and the whole thing happened in complete silence. It gave me a deep sense of unease because it was literally like someone hit the mute button on life."
VulcanVisions
Bad Kermit
Kermit The Frog Meme GIF by IdentityGiphy"Poison dart frogs aren't poisonous in captivity."
"I own 5 of them and anytime I tell someone I own some I always get 'Do you ever lick them' or 'Can you go kill someone with them.' But yeah they get their poison from what they eat, and all I give them is fruit flies."
JMfury
Poison frogs?
That sounds like something Rose would have a story about on 'The Golden Girls.'
Redditor rentinghappiness wanted to hear about the things everyone really didn't know anything about until it happened to them, so they asked:
"What is something you used to think people were over-exaggerating about until you experienced it yourself?"
We never really know anything about anything until we try it for ourselves.
Mouth Issues
Dentist GIFGiphy"Dentist chiming in… tooth pain. I knew academically how painful they could be until it happened to me."
juneburger
"You know the pain is serious when you start looking forward to the inevitable root canal."
HailMari248
Wonders of Nature
"Giant sequoia trees. When I finally saw them in person, they looked fake. I could not comprehend a tree of that size."
schaefer001
"And we may have lost 15-20% of the remaining trees during some big fires in 2020 and 2021. A 2011 estimate puts it that there were only 80,000 remainings. They truly are wondrous organisms that I feel like everyone should have the chance to experience if they can."
"I'm a big believer in doing everything we can to protect and preserve these silent giants. It's really sad that so many were cut down by loggers when the wood is such poor quality for human purposes, to begin with. Such an utter and sad waste."
this_is_poorly_done
Just Me
"Loneliness."
Fried__SoapI
"I'm with you. Put all my cards into a girl who went suddenly cold and dark on me. Now I'm alone at rock bottom figuring out my next moves. You know, the smartest people in the world and also the happiest people in the world can be the loneliest?"
"I was only recently informed it's okay to talk to myself and hype myself. Enjoy my own company. I'm absolutely going to learn to do that. I'm thinking of painting, walking, and weekend trips out on a bus. Would be nice if you could have joined me even if we sat in silence."
Roofdragon
The Years Gone By...
"The physical pain of getting older. Damn."
marklikeadawg
"The emotional pain too. I get so nostalgic and teary over the past and how much has changed. It's a weird grieving process over losing your youth and the way things were."
heethersmeether
"On my 35th birthday, my wife woke me up with a cupcake and a candle, sang me 'Happy Birthday' and then congratulated me on being '15 from 50'... that really hit me hard. The other day I turned 45 and she said '5 from 50' and that hit me so hard, I just wanted to stay in bed all day. I still feel like an irresponsible teen but I'm pushing 50. Insane."
Opa_Kalaka
It's Hazy
Confused Always Sunny GIF by It's Always Sunny in PhiladelphiaGiphy"Brain fog. I had an alcohol withdrawal seizure in March. My short-term memory and sense of time are absolutely sh*t right now. On the plus side, I haven't had a drink in over 90 days and I don't want one."
Sideshow_Bob_Ross
Oh the wonders of the brain.
What a mess.
Scorched
Menopause Hot Flashes GIF by Kino LorberGiphy"Hot Flashes. I didn’t think they were this bad. I’m a 31-year-old man who took Wellbutrin for the past month and hot flashes are a side effect."
"I thought you just thought you were hot. No motherf**ker you are. You’re super hot legitimately, and you have to do something about it or you’ll go insane. It’s not in your head. It’s your brain raising your temps until you can’t focus on anything else."
_PswayZ_
Everlasting
"Chronic illness, there is absolutely no way you can truly understand the impact unless you experience it."
Disastrous-Phase-979
"Just that idea of always being sick and you will NEVER not be sick again."
"AND you're expected to participate in society just the same as everyone else. It's deeply f**ked up."
Farisr9k
"I like the part where I've been in pain for 25 years so I can kind of still function even when it's really bad."
"And then I try to get an ambulance guy or an admin assistant in a hospital to believe that I'm having an emergency and they're like 'You seem fine, take some Tylenol and go home' until I finally get a blood test, and then the doctor goes 'Holy crap, you're about to die, why didn't you come to the ER sooner.'"
"Like, listen up MF, I had to take a go**amn Uber to get here and then argue with reception for an hour."
BlahBlahILoveToast
Stoned
"How much a kidney stone hurts."
SpiritusSanctu
"Most people expect it to hurt the most when passing a stone through the urethra. Nothing prepared me for the pain as it passed through my kidney/ureter."
"One second I would be fine, carrying on conversations, prancing around nimbly-nimbly. The next second I would be keeled over, crying in agony, losing my lunch due to the sudden onset of crippling pain. 0/10 ... Would not recommend it."
King_of_Lunch223
Close Your Eyes
"Insomnia."
Successful_Fall7801
"Oh, what I would give to not have insomnia! I go through periods of sleeping more or less normal, and then for seemingly no reason, I’ll have weeks on end where a good night of sleep is IMPOSSIBLE. I’ll get 2-4 hours of sleep despite pills, tea, baths, white noise, meditation - everything."
"I’ll spend my days so deeply, utterly exhausted that I can barely think, and my whole body feels heavy, lifeless. It’s hard to feel any kind of emotion, let alone happiness or contentedness. Just existing as a human-shaped puddle until the time when I can go to bed and hope to god that tonight will be different for some unknown reason."
"Insomnia is a real bi*ch. It will tank your mental health and send you spiraling really fast."
thesmallshadows
Beep
Meme Reaction GIF by TravisGiphy"Tinnitus. It’s torture."
DissidentBliss
"I don't mind it much 'cause I've had it since I was born. That means I don't know what proper silence is."
77x5ghost
"Me too, they thought I had hearing issues when I was young because I couldn’t really hear some of the beeps well because they matched the pitch of the ringing."
ehter13
Don't judge another until you lace up their shoes and walk a mile in them!
Do you have anything else to share? Let us know in the comments.
