Give someone a compliment...

I couldn't sleep last night. I kept tossing and turning, thinking to myself how could this have possibly been avoided? I don't know the circumstances behind why Kyle did it, and I won't pretend that I had spoken to him enough recently to have a clue. 


When I woke up this morning, the first thing I did was open up facebook and check his page. The compliments rolling in on his page are endless. "You were taken too early, you were too damn talented, you had such much potential, such a great kid and great friend". My blog post about him alone had over 150 views. For my previous 20 posts, I had barely 400. Makes me wonder, where were all these people when he was alive? Where was I, when he was alive. 


You have to imagine that if he knew that all these people cared about him so, if he heard people tell him kind words once in awhile, maybe, just maybe this could've been avoided. 


I'm asking everyone who reads this to do something for me. for Kyle. 


Give somebody a compliment. Make a point to do it once a day. And I'm not talking about your best friend, who you walk up behind on a path and say "damn girl, your hair looks good today". I'm talking about someone who you care about, but may not speak to that often. I don't care how you do it. You can send it in a message on FB if you are too nervous to do it in person. You can write it down, you can post it somewhere, just make sure they hear it. Whether or not it makes you feel better, it may make them feel better. The thought may go through their mind that "oh, somebody really does care about me, really does think that I do something well". And it might make that person's day just a little bit better. 


Let me start, as I have two compliments to send out to people I used to be close to and have fallen away from:


Ilene: You are a great director. Really. I wish I would've told you that more often while I was at school, but I was being petty and didn't like the fact that you beat me in that election. For some reason, the thought of you becoming better than me didn't sit well. Why? I guess I was just immature. But there wasn't a day that went by where I wasn't proud of you. I remember how excited I was for you after the first show you finished. Keep with it. I may have taken another path but I know you are strong enough to persevere and become successful. You have a great future ahead of you. Good luck finding a job and just remember that I will be thinking about you.


Matt: Boy have we had some serious issues. I can't say I ever fully understood our friendship. One day we would be the best of friends, the next day, nothing. It was odd, to say the least. But the thing I have always admired about you is your ambition. No matter how much crap I gave you for being up all hours of the night doing whatever, you always fulfilled your obligations, and you always wanted to better yourself. You worked to get the top seat in STN, then switched over to SGA and was on the board, you worked with PRSSA, and now you work at the Hartford. You always strive to get to the next level. I'm happy that someone from our graduating class was able to find a job, and happy it could be you. You'll always be my first beer pong partner. I hope you are enjoying life as much now as you were in school. 


See? Not that difficult. As humans, we have a tendency to only focus on the negative. If someone is doing something wrong, they will hear about it. Unfortunately, if someone is doing something right, they usually don't hear about it. This post is asking you to change that, if only for 10 minutes a day. Tell someone when they are doing something right. Put a smile on their face. It doesn't matter if it cheers you up, as long as it cheers them up. 


R.I.P. Kyle.