Most days, if you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she’s not usually like this. Maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it’s also not impossible. It just depends what you want to consider. If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won’t consider possibilities that aren’t annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.
… The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.
— David Foster Wallace, from This Is Water, his 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College
I don't think that I've been a nice person recently. I told a friend that last week in New York over drinks in some hipster bar down at Alphabet City. She looked at me all confused, and said "I think you're pretty nice."
"No, there's a distinction between a 'nice person' and a 'good person'. I know I am a good person, in fact I feel pretty strongly that I am a good person, but I really need to work on being nicer."
She followed up by asking me the difference -- to me, it's really quite simple. Being good is a reference to one's values, sets of internalized core principles and beliefs. They drive our motivations, persuasions, and even dreams. They are like blood vessels, nourishing our very being so we can make certain movements and thought processes in a particular way. I'm pretty sure that 'good' values are universal across cultures. They are simple, absolute, and not up for debate. Just ask God.
But being nice, is what I feel are surface (皮毛) manners. It's nebulous, adaptable, and sometimes misused. It's deployed for social lubrication, general feel-good, oftentimes deception. The idea of being 'nice' but not 'good' sends shivers up my spine. I rationalize that if I am good, then my being nice should not take any concerted effort because it is coming from my heart. And importantly I'm sincere, and that adds credit. It matters a lot to me for my words and action to have weight and currency.
At the same time, I realize that the reason I am not as nice as I should be good can be attributed to an issue with tolerance. Looking back at the times when my temper flared up, the majority are "professional" instances when someone's execution, reaction, feedback did not meet my standard. Not only is it a very high standard to begin with, but recently I've been automatically assuming the worst out of people. (And thus the ugly screaming lady)
Gene once told me that I'm terrible at explaining things because I assume that everyone just "gets it" like I do. "But it's not so obvious," he said, "so you skip through parts that people still need to understand. Not everyone's that smart, and no one can read your mind." Well... I guess I was lucky to always be surrounded with such talent like in college or even banking (although that is really questionable) so I never considered myself to be outstandingly intelligent. But I'm not in Kansas anymore, and am now working with people of all different backgrounds, cultures, experience, skill-sets, personalities.... I need to be more tolerant, accepting, and most importantly KIND. I am so impatient these days, and this is not kind. I am not kind when I give people the death glare for making me explain something again. I am not kind when I cut people off when they're talking because I "got it" already. I am not kind when I jump to the conclusion that things are bungled up because you're an idiot.
When you look down on others, that means that you feel highly about yourself. I think this is the root of the problem. That's horrible and not okay.
This is why I felt compelled to write something when I read David Foster Wallace's excerpt above, because I feel myself inching towards feeling more and more bitchy, and it makes me miserable. I don't want to be arrogant, perhaps this requires more "fellowship" with men of all makes and kinds.
I just realized something -- kind vs. nice.
I don't want to be a nicer person, I want to be a kinder person... because I would mean it.
Today's a new day. :) Better, stronger, faster!
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