Day 25: Compliment

What is the best compliment you’ve ever been given? Do you agree with it? Go ahead, you can brag just this once. If you’re a Lent!Blog! participant, you’re probably pretty awesome.

You know that conversation during an amicable breakup when, to neutralize all the sadness and all the talk of what you are not, your soon-to-be ex tells you all the things that you are? And then you do the same, until you're both kind of weirdly happy while still being pretty damn upset? Well, my greatest compliment comes from one of those tragic-comic conversations I had a few years ago.

“You’re the most resourceful person I’ve ever met,” he said.

It wasn't romantic, it wasn't even sentimental. But I loved that he said it. I think about it all the time – I relish in how it is true now, and wonder how it will impact my future.

Many people are intelligent, and can utilize the latent skills within to propel themselves forward. Others are lucky – born in the right circumstances, or always in the right place at the right time.

Those are both nice qualities, and I think I have a hint of each of them. But I know my real strength lies in my inner tenacity, my ability to ask the right questions and inability to say no. The best part of being resourceful, though, is that it requires a wide net of supporters. Often, finding the best solution occurs not by Googling or through trial and error, but by filing through your contacts and realizing you know a guy, who knows a guy, who can help. Being resourceful means that you have to maintain relationships so when you do ask for help, people are more than willing to comply.

I’m terrible at Excel and I once nearly had a meltdown when some long-hidden macros popped out of an old document I'd repurposed. The deadline was looming. I cursed myself for not having started from scratch, cursed myself for not having a left brain, and then, I emailed the document to the above ex-boyfriend with a plea for help. He was, among other things, the left brain guy, and his work life consisted mostly of complex things in Excel I couldn’t even begin to understand. In three minutes, I had the spreadsheet back, no longer riddled with auto-tabbing columns and other problematic additives.

In the email, he wrote “Happy to help.” And I know he was.