Why try to be nice?
Aug. 20th, 2005 11:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sobriqueSomeone asked me in the Pub last night, "why do you try to be so nice?".
Now, relative niceness aside, it was a question that gave me pause for thought.
I mean, I hadn't really given it much before, it just simply was a thing that had to be done.
But with a little reflection, I've realised that there is an answer. It's all to do with your perceptions of the world. You see, I've never met someone with no redeeming features whatsoever. They may or may not even exist. Of all the people I've met, they've all had something special and wonderful inside them. Admittedly, some hide it more than most.
In many ways, trying to be 'nice' is a very selfish way of looking at the world:
Wouldn't you rather look around, and be surrounded by beautiful multifaceted jewels, than blocks of gray dark blobs of concrete?
In everyone you meet, the difference is just a question of looking the right way.
The beautiful jewels around are all different colours, shapes and sizes. None are perfect. No one ever is. But even a flawed diamond is still a diamond.
The saddest thing of all is when a person loses sight of that within themselves. Sometimes they need to be reminded.
And the real thing? Love is not finite. Reaching out to someone and caring for them exposes you to being hurt by them. And hurt in the only ways one can truly be hurt. But it never lessens you.
Now, relative niceness aside, it was a question that gave me pause for thought.
I mean, I hadn't really given it much before, it just simply was a thing that had to be done.
But with a little reflection, I've realised that there is an answer. It's all to do with your perceptions of the world. You see, I've never met someone with no redeeming features whatsoever. They may or may not even exist. Of all the people I've met, they've all had something special and wonderful inside them. Admittedly, some hide it more than most.
In many ways, trying to be 'nice' is a very selfish way of looking at the world:
Wouldn't you rather look around, and be surrounded by beautiful multifaceted jewels, than blocks of gray dark blobs of concrete?
In everyone you meet, the difference is just a question of looking the right way.
The beautiful jewels around are all different colours, shapes and sizes. None are perfect. No one ever is. But even a flawed diamond is still a diamond.
The saddest thing of all is when a person loses sight of that within themselves. Sometimes they need to be reminded.
And the real thing? Love is not finite. Reaching out to someone and caring for them exposes you to being hurt by them. And hurt in the only ways one can truly be hurt. But it never lessens you.
