From Contrived Praise to Deserved Appreciation
On the poison of empty flattery, and the sincere appreciation every soul is owed
The human soul is fashioned to love approval, and it rarely escapes the seduction of praise when praise comes wave upon wave, again and again, until the soul begins to believe that what is said of it is its truth — not the image of some passing interest dressed up in the garb of flattery and eulogy. Truly spoke the one who said: he who lives on praise dies by insult. Speaking from my own experience, I spent long years in the corridors of politics and diplomacy, in a milieu teeming with counterfeit praise and courtesies of every kind, the genuine and the hollow alike, and I arrived, after a long journey, at this: appreciation is the one healthy medium, indispensable in private and public relations alike; everything else is a poison we swallow and a ruin toward which we walk.
For at least two decades I moved through positions and titles, sat with eminent figures — befriended them, even — dealt with every sort of human being from every quarter, and heard such praise and acclaim that, had I grown used to it and taken delight in it, it would have destroyed me. Through all of it there dwelt in me a disquiet that would hardly rest, an insistent question that kept returning: what value does any of this add, if you do not hold that value as your own — purely yours, not vanishing when a position vanishes, not hurling you to the ground should you withdraw from those assemblies and those people, live in a city where no one knows you and no one receives you, and return to economy class and ordinary life, where no one registers your presence at all?
Yes — I used to wound my own heart deliberately, so that it would neither sway nor strut whenever I found myself exposed to praise, because I knew by instinct that such presence, and such company, would add to me neither worth nor greatness, nor confer on me an honor I did not possess. And indeed, when I left that life and took refuge in a quiet corner, I missed none of it; rather, a great rest and gladness washed over me, as though I had been delivered from an affliction — for true rest, and true worth, lie in a person being simply what they are, in nature and disposition, in matters small and great, in secret and in public.
I did not open with my own experience because I am a special case, or because I am wonderful, but because I wanted to disclose the secret of getting out safely. It lies in this: I spent long years fortifying a soul that loves approval against the intoxication of compliments, and I left praise no opening to engulf me, for I was certain that its source was a post I occupied, or a favor awaited from me, and that it would vanish when the post did. So I never once rejoiced in it; I feared it throughout that journey, dreading that if I savored it and grew addicted to it, it would corrupt my heart, and I would come to think myself a woman of merit, the author of everything splendid and beautiful. My fear was well placed: when I left those positions I left it all behind me, and everyone went their own way, and of the "friends" there remained only that rare few — the loyal and the noble. How glad I am that I understood this, and stood fully prepared to let go.
Yes, experience teaches us what schools and books do not. I have seen with my own eyes people whose affairs ended in deep humiliation and great anguish when the crowds dispersed from around them, or when people and prestige abandoned them together, and I saw how true was the opening with which I began this reflection. In this recurring scene there is a psychological lesson before it is a social one: when the sense of self is built on volatile external inputs such as praise, the absence of praise becomes a sudden collapse — like one who built his house on shifting sand.
And in this age of tangled, many-branching relationships in which we live, we have never been more in need of learning this lesson — not as an intellectual luxury, but as a lifeline. Many people enter our lives not out of love for us, but in pursuit of an interest we are the last to know of, or some passing benefit; they smile in our faces and pour over us praise enough to carry off our minds, as though plying you with wine, until the desired end is achieved — then how quickly they turn their faces and their backs, even should you meet them hours later.
Such is the nature of many relationships — and how dangerous it is to make the praise of such people a scale on which we weigh ourselves!
Ibn al-Qayyim, may God have mercy on him, pointed to the root of this affliction when he said that whoever works for the sake of people — seeking standing in their eyes, fearing their harm, or coveting their benefit — does not truly know them; he is ignorant of their reality and ignorant of his Lord: "Whoever knows people puts them in their proper place, and whoever knows God devotes his deeds and words purely to Him." For to know people as they truly are — their fickleness, their whims, the shifting of their measures — is precisely what frees the heart from clinging to their approval and their words.
The intent is not to sow suspicion in hearts, nor to shake the trust between people — for shutting oneself away breeds a desolation, and a savagery, no less harmful than courting people and drifting along with them. The principle, rather, is this: do not allow praise to pierce the membranes of your heart until you are sure of its source; and even when you trust the source, do not make the approval of any human being your aim, nor his praise your fuel — for if you do, you will one day find yourself out in the open, alone with your truth; and more likely still, you will lose yourself and your meaning little by little, until you become a mirror in which the whims and moods of others are reflected back.
This, it seems, is what Ibn al-Qayyim meant in his famous line: "The pleasure of people is a goal that cannot be attained, and the pleasure of God is a goal that must not be abandoned; so leave what cannot be attained, and attain what must not be abandoned." As for uniting the two goals, it is impossible — and wisdom lies in leaving the impossible and holding fast to the truth.
In the Prophetic guidance there is what frees us from people and from the chase after their approval. Al-Tirmidhi relates that the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said: "Whoever seeks God's pleasure at the cost of people's displeasure, God will suffice him against the people; and whoever seeks people's pleasure at the cost of God's displeasure, God will abandon him to the people." Here is a precise contrast: between the one who makes God his aim, whom God spares the toil of pleasing creatures and courting their affection, so that he lives serene — never posturing, never changing colors, never fawning, never sinking into gloom if people cast him aside — and the one who gives people all his space and makes them his direction and destination, whom God leaves to them, so that he spends his life trying to please them and never reaches the goal, because their pleasure, as we have said, is a goal that cannot be attained.
And the Noble Quran has warned us of a consequence far graver than we imagine: "And do not be like those who forgot God, so He made them forget their own souls" (وَلَا تَكُونُوا كَالَّذِينَ نَسُوا اللَّهَ فَأَنسَاهُمْ أَنفُسَهُمْ) (al-Hashr: 19). What an astonishing bond between forgetting God and forgetting oneself! Whoever cuts himself off from the Lord of the Worlds as his original point of reference, and from the fixed scale laid down by the Creator, Mighty and Majestic, will not remain without reference points; he will find himself prey to a multitude of unregulated ones governed by whims. And so a person runs after people, his whole life surging in search of their acceptance — and how remote, how remote it is; how could he ever grasp a mirage?
The righteous forebears, foremost among them Umar ibn al-Khattab, may God be pleased with him, were warier of praise than of blame, knowing the danger it posed to sincerity. And the prophets, peace be upon them — the purest of creation and the most truthful — faced the harshest forms of criticism, mockery, denial, and false accusation, yet their certainty never wavered, because the goal was never the approval of their peoples or their appeasement. That is the secret of steadfastness before the storms of anger and rejection — and it is what we lack, we who are blown about by every passing word, shaken by every criticism, delighted by every counterfeit admiration, because our real worth is held hostage to people's tongues.
Some of us fear people's distance and coldness to the point of panic. The truth is that liberation from captivity to people and their opinion does not isolate us from them or push them away; it is precisely what draws us nearer to them, more truly and more deeply. In the sacred hadith related by al-Bukhari and Muslim: "When God loves a servant, He calls Gabriel: 'I love so-and-so, so love him,' and Gabriel loves him; then he calls out in the heavens: 'God loves so-and-so, so love him,' and the people of heaven love him; then acceptance is laid down for him upon the earth." The one whose heart stands straight with the Creator has no need to put on an act for any creature, and no compulsion to shift shape and color for every situation; without striving for it, without false flattery, God opens for him a door to acceptance and love in people's hearts — for the pleasure of the Master of hearts is both the goal and the way to the love of people.
This is the equation when the scale is God's regard, not people's regard. Only then do we see that the pursuit of creatures' approval and pleasure is a summer cloud: it may come for an hour, or a day and part of a day, then evaporate and pass. Would anyone build his happiness and his life on something so fleeting and fickle — gladdened by one word, made wretched by another?
As for the one whose sole concern is God's pleasure, you find him walking among people secure: his heart does not dance to their praise and lean, nor dread their blame and bow. He hears praise and gives thanks; he hears criticism and reflects — because his true worth is kept safe with his Lord, not with them. This, in its essence, is liberation from servitude to creatures into freedom of the soul, so that the servant belongs purely to the One who holds acceptance, elevation, and honor in this world and the next.
The difficulty is that there are those who attached themselves to God, sought His pleasure alone, and excelled in it, yet never learned to appreciate people — and in doing so they keep merit from reaching those who merit it. For freedom from pleasing people in no way means ignoring people or denying them their right to thanks and appreciation. There is a great door among the doors of goodness: the good word, addressed to the one who deserves it, that builds and mends and heals and strengthens. The good word weighs as charity in the scale, and in it there is life for hearts; and the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, did not forbid us honest and goodly praise — rather, he made gratitude for kindness part of the completeness of faith: "He who does not thank people does not thank God."
Deserved, sincere appreciation differs in origin and essence from counterfeit praise and contrived courtesies, because it is built as the acknowledgment of a truth, and of a worth that stands firm.
To withhold from a person what is rightfully theirs is an injustice. There are those who cannot find the courage to thank anyone or acknowledge another's merit, while others manage to exaggerate to the point of fraud and hypocrisy, without restraint or limit.
Modern psychological research has confirmed what this value, upheld by Islam, long pointed to: a human being grows and flourishes on finding someone who values them at their true worth, while neglect and the absence of appreciation carve into the soul an emptiness and an injustice that can reach the point of anguish and illness. Sincere appreciation, by contrast, builds up latent capacities and releases them, and spurs a person to give still more — a nourishment for the soul no less vital than the body's food.
The difference, then, is not between being praised and not being praised, but between anchoring the source of our self-worth firmly with God, and letting our appreciation of others be truthful — proceeding from what is right, not from self-interest. If we grasp this scale, and know that God's pleasure is the goal that must not be abandoned, and people's pleasure the mirage that cannot be attained, does that not call us, amid the press of our daily lives, to pause for a moment and ask: on what scale do we weigh ourselves in our solitude, far from the eyes of praisers and critics — and do we tell the affecters apart from the sincere appreciators?
Dr. Fadila Grine
Montreal, July 2026
