When is the last time you told someone they looked nice? When is the last time someone told you that you looked nice?

People need to be seen, not just as someone that is always there, in the house, on the street, in the meeting or even at a coffee hour. We need to take the time to notice people so they don’t feel they are ghosts among the crowd or at our household table.

It’s easy to criticize someone’s hairstyle or their unusual dress. When we do that we cut to the center of their core by making judgement on who they are. Because of it we may not see the authentic person inside the body. They may hide it and become the person they think society expects them to be, so their feelings aren’t hurt, or they aren’t cut to the core by mean words.

We all have been the purveyor of mean words and targeted those that we see as different than us. We all share the blame. Not only does it extend to what we wear, our hairstyle choices, but also our lifestyle choices of gender. How many of those we love have been afraid to show us who they are in all circumstances because of the way we might behave toward them?

I look back on my life and realize for much of it I haven’t always been authentic. The older I got the more I yearned to let that impish and creative part of me out. I began to do that in my books, and in the last house I had. You can still drive by and see the river I painted down my steps. And many other projects that were a little crazy. I haven’t always spoke out when the good ole boys ridiculed people, especially women because of their weight and because of their looks. I laughed along with them, not because I thought it was funny but because I wanted to belong, and I didn’t want it to turn on me. I am sorry I did not speak out sooner when these things were happening, but I was scared because I didn’t have a good sense of who I was in this world.

We also wear our past. I remember high school when a boy by the name of Bill, in the class ahead of me, one day telling me I was the ugliest girl he had ever seen. It changed how I interacted with people for a short time, especially boys. I couldn’t believe anyone would like me or date me.

As an adult and writing a column for the Albert Lea Tribune, I received a letter from someone telling me how ugly my crazy picture that represented me was, and…that I was an ugly little girl, I had no friends then, and I had no friends now. They didn’t sign it. The difference between the boy in school and the letter in my adult life was that I knew I had friends in school, and I knew I had friends as an adult, and I knew people liked my column. I had the compliments, the maturity and the confidence to handle it.

I’ve had wonderful groups of friends through the years. We forged a solid bond but I must say they were very respectable friends, and I am not sure they appreciated when my weird side came out, but they never let me know that. That is a good friend.

However, I’ve always been drawn to those unique personalities that have a little of the wild side in them. I had a couple of walk on the wild side friends right after I graduated from high school and I found a part of myself I didn’t know, but I let go of that side as I lived my life. When I moved I reconnected with that fun when I met my new friend, who I will call her K. She had many illnesses but she kept on going, and had a wild sense of humor, a what you see is what you get personality, and I felt alive after a very long drought. I never knew what she was going to come up with and when she was going to knock on my door and drag me into one of her crazy escapades, such as getting the tanning bed she had been hiding under her bed, out of her apartment and down the street, under a sheet that made it look as if a ghost was flitting across our parking lot. And it was Halloween. She woke me up again to fun in life.

What does have to do with telling someone they look good? She was good at compliments and not just with me. I noticed those that were silent and didn’t speak, and that a compliment made them smile. Elderly people do not get compliments much. Every day we may see the same people and take them for granted, and not see who they are and how a compliment may be the only bright spot in their day. It also may change how they see themselves when they get ready for the day.

Take notice of the people in your life. Have they given up because they feel it doesn’t matter as no one notices them anyway? One day last fall I was at a brewery, yes a brewery, with a friend, and a stranger at another table told me, “You have a beautiful smile.” It made my day and it made me want to smile more and pass it along.

Have you seen a house for sale in your community and you wondered where it was? You realize you’ve driven by that house every single day on the way to work and you’ve never noticed it. It’s the same with people. We don’t see those that are right in front of us, especially the quiet ones. I am anything but quiet, and I am rejoicing in learning new things about myself that I’ve hidden every single day. Part of the reason I think I did that was because I thought I might embarrass my family with my wacky ideas so I wouldn’t be accepted. We shouldn’t do that. The loud people, like me are seen, but it’s those we don’t take the time to notice that need our caring and attention, especially our family.

We live in a world where hate is being thrown at us right and left on our social media. We don’t know what’s real and not, and the bots are attacking people causing some of them to take their life. It’s a helpless feeling. Maybe all we can do is give someone smile or a compliment, especially those who we take their presence for granted. It may help them get through their day. Maybe all we can do each day is find something good about them, and let them know they are valued, or boost their confidence by a kind word. Let’s feed them with kind words about themselves.

When is the last time you told someone they looked nice? When is the last time someone told you, you looked nice?