An Advocate For Nice

I realised out of all the quotes I’ve heard and read and the wisdom I’ve received, the phrase or approach to life that sticks out to me is the most simple. It came from my mum, her motto to life, “it’s nice to be nice”. 

Simple is best. 

People say love makes the world go round but I think nice does. Love is exclusive, it’s restrictive. We don’t love everyone. We don’t love everyone equally. We can’t. We don’t love the person in the street we walk past. We don’t love the cashier at the supermarket. We don’t love the person in the car behind us while queued at the traffic lights. We certainly don’t love these people at the same level that we love our parents, our children, or our spouse. We may love our dog even more. 

We can’t approach everyone with the same level of love and that restricts us to treating our nearest and dearest wonderfully, but taking a less emphatic approach to others. My mother is nice to everyone. Her nice is limitless. She says you can be nice to everyone and anyone. Limitless. 

My mother compliments the man that bags our groceries until his eyes twinkle and he smiles a little brighter for the next customer. She used to make entire food hampers for teachers at my primary school. One unfortunate time when my Dad ended up in hospital, she returned after he had left to deliver wine and chocolates for the staff that cared for him, and for those that didn't, "they all work hard", she noted. She buys beer for the builders on a Friday afternoon. The builders on our neighbours property. Get this, my mum met one of her now close friends because she was rear ended by her teenage son. My mother was literally involved in a car crash and it resulted in friendship. 

While this is great, being the daughter of this rarity is no easy feat: I am constantly held to a ruefully high standard of niceness. I am her daughter and therefore I have a level of niceness expected of me. People assume it’s hereditary. It is a blessing and a burden, because I am not as nice as her. Naturally. I don’t mean this to invite pity, I just have to work to see opportunity where nice can be inserted. I have to consciously think how and where and what. My mother does it without thinking. Innate-nice. 

Since high school, my friends have been besotted with my mother and I sometimes wonder whether they visit for me or for her. They labelled her SuperMum. I should be SuperDaughter but I missed the Super gene. I’m working on it. How can you compete with nice? Well you can’t. Nor should you. Just be nice, too. 

Nice is free. It is free. It isn’t free when you buy beer for your neighbours contractors and wave a nonchalant hand at car repairs. It isn’t free when you buy the supermarket out of snacks so you can host a sleepover for your daughter and her friends. It isn’t free when you buy chocolates for the “nice men who do a great job at collecting our recycling”. But nice doesn’t have to be all that.

Actually, my mother doesn’t do extravagant. She doesn’t do nice so that there is any expectation of return gesture or guilt. She has measured the nice to fit perfectly to its task. It is not overwhelming nice. It is thoughtful, unexpected. It is nice to those who earn and deserve it but don’t ask for it. Do you think the recycling man went to work every morning thinking “gosh, I hope today is the day that someone gives me something for my effort”? It is his job. He gets paid to do it and most people probably think it’s ridiculous that my mother gave him chocolates. I bet he doesn’t. She made his day. He could have gone home a little chirpier that day. He could have cooked his wife a meal, decided to visit his grand children or spent time with his elderly neighbour. He could have simply walked with a spring in his step. He could have done none of these things, too. It doesn't really matter, because for a moment, he was touched, smiling at nothing in particular, feeling the gesture.

Nice doesn’t mean being easy or being walked over. It doesn’t mean being weak. Nice is the strongest thing you can be. Do you know how hard it is to be nice? Giving in, being rude, ungrateful; that’s easy. How many people have you come across that are like that? A lot. We can all be mean in a heartbeat, effortlessly. We could all be mean all day and not break a sweat. But sometimes putting a smile on your face is hard. Putting aside a hard day to help a stranger across the street is strength. Devoting your time to talking to a lonely elderly man at the grocery store when you’ve working a 12 hour graveyard shift and your eye lids weigh more than you groceries, that’s strength. You don’t complain about your own day, you listen sympathetically, you acknowledge that this moment in this man’s life may make his week. It is a concerted choice of effort. 

Because it is nice to be nice. It is nice for you, to know your day wasn’t wasted because you made someone else feel good. It is nice for the other, to know that someone will listen, will smile. Sometimes it is nice just to know that you’re not alone in the world. To know that someone else sees, and appreciates. If you’re lucky enough to be surrounded by your loved ones, appreciate that. But be strong, be nice. 

My mother knows best: it is nice to be nice. 

Youth is Overrated.

When I was five years old I was asked what I wanted to do when I grew up, I told them “be a shopper”. Evidently I didn’t dream too big when I was younger. Despite those youthful ambitions not starting too lofty, that doesn’t mean they didn’t grow. I’m no longer obsessed with making a career out of spending money to increase my material wealth but age has allowed me to see the importance of other such endeavours (not that aspiring to “be a shopper” is anything to lament but I do think my mother breathed a sigh of relief when these plans changed). 

I now find myself motivated and inspired by women who are at the height of success and loving it. Thriving in their job; making decisions, delegating, proving their worth and maintaining their own sense of confidence and drive in the face of difficulties. I, like media and the many, was infatuated with the success of the young; those who reached the top of their field before they passed through adolescence, or those who age proved no barrier in their determination to prevail. Those who knew young to dream big. 

There is so much focus on the accomplishments of youth, “she’s done so much and she’s so young” which inevitably lends to pressure to succeed quickly, spotlight clambering over tales of overnight dreams becoming reality. But reality is hard work and late nights and missing social occasions and cancelling on your boyfriend on Valentine’s day because projects due the next day don’t finish themselves. Overnight success is rare, as is young success and youth isn’t everything. It can carry the burden of expectation and comparison. It’s lovely to hear the fairy tales of individuals who carry luck on their side and who know they’re “blessed” to be where they are. But the real fairy tales? They’re behind the scenes, not glorified by media or tagging headlines. They’re the ones that are too busy focusing on deadlines and to-do lists and pushing themselves to complete more than is required. They’re the ones quietly making a difference. 

The “you have so much time” line that 20-something’s are fed by elders feels shallow, absent of truth, because the reality is our time passes so quickly; between work, study, friends, boyfriend, family, travel and trying to squeeze social occasions and fun in there is overwhelming and the clock whizzes past along with the belief that we have plenty of time to have a career and a family. 

The idea that there are people younger than us achieving more, and faster is inspiring, until it’s no longer available. Until our youth is snatched away from us between all the obligations we’re trying to fulfill. Inspiration disappears along with possibility. The attraction of youthful success is only encouraging while it is available. Then 25 hits amidst watching teenagers sail past on top of their mountain of accolades, building gadgets worth millions at a time when you were still enjoying life; running wild, acting silly and spending days gallivanting with friends under the freedom of youth. 

Is youthful success all it appears to be? The media sensationalise and simplify the notion that we all can create such opportunity. Youth does not equal success. Hard work, determination, motivation, ambition; these are part of the equation that perpetrate success in youth, not something born out of the simple naivete that dictates our age. 

Thankfully, I find myself inspired by the women who lived their youth; recklessly, full of mistakes and joy rides, of late nights and too many ciders and endless experiences and continued to work hard when pregnant, with toddlers looping circles around concentrated faces as the coffee cups stacked up began to seem depleted of caffeine. Or powering through nap time for the opportunity of quiet. Of women who maintain relationships; intimate and friendly, the upkeep of a house, of a family dynamic and of financial stability. Women who continue to put food on the table, glistening, young eyes to bed with a bedtime story, and they still find time to build careers, to use the powerful female mind to build companies, to make a difference, to follow a passion that didn’t die when puberty passed or when their success story can no longer be glorified for happening “so young”. For me, inspiration is that; hard work, determination, perseverance and triumph through failure; achieved in longevity, a story that lasts the distance.