Growing up, I was told to be nice. I think a lot of little girls were told the same thing growing up, and likely still are. Some boys too. I tell my boys to be kind, at least I think I do. There’s a difference between nice and kind, but we’ll get to that.
My brother asked me the other day, “do you know the origins of the word nice?”
“No, I can’t say that I do” I responded, because I didn’t know. I hadn’t thought about it before.
“It means ignorant”, he said walking away, leaving me baffled.
No, that can’t be right? I thought to myself. Why would I have been raised to be ignorant? Why on Earth would my parents have told me to be nice, growing up, if that’s what it meant?
Turns out he was right.
According to Oxford Languages (on Google) the word ‘nice’ originates from the Latin word ‘nescire’, to not know, and ‘nescius’ meaning ignorant. The commonplace definition of nice is ‘giving pleasure or satisfaction’, or to be pleasant/agreeable or attractive.
Well, isn’t that such a typical description of what women are expected to be within a patriarchal society…. Being there for the purpose of giving pleasure, being attractive and agreeable.
Fuck that! I don’t think I want to be nice anymore.
The phone rings. It’s Hubby’s mobile. I watch how he takes a call from telemarketers. I can’t hear who it is, or what they’re saying, but I can tell it’s a spam call. He’s not interested in what they have to say. They are wasting his time. He listens for less than 20 seconds, before he hangs up, without any apology or consideration for the person on the other end of the phone.
“Well that wasn’t very nice, was it!?” I say to him.
“Why do I need to be nice?”, he shoots back at me. “I wasn’t interested in buying solar panels”.
So matter-of-factly he responded, without a shred of guilt or remorse.
It got me to thinking.
Imagine that. Imagine living in such a way that you didn’t have to be nice. Didn’t have to apologise, justify, and/or come up with excuses. If you weren’t interested in something, you could just dismiss it. Imagine not needing to be nice as a default.
Being able to simply end a call to a telemarketer. End a conversation with a stranger. Or end any interaction with anyone, really, without having to ‘be nice’. Shouldn’t this be something we can all do, whenever we want? I guess that’s the difference between growing up being conditioned to be nice, and growing up being conditioned to be yourself. Receiving the message:
Don’t waste your time. It is valuable. You are valuable.
If a salesperson is trying to sell you something that you’re not interested in buying, you don’t waste your time or theirs and you end the conversation. Your time is valuable. You are valuable.
It makes so much common sense, but it’s so unnatural for me to do. Because from the time I could walk, talk and interact with the world, I was told to be nice. I started to absorb this belief that ‘niceness’ was the most important virtue a girl can embody. God forbid a woman is not nice. Well, then she is a fucking bitch. I always hated being called a bitch when I was younger! (I’m ok with it nowadays.)
I wonder if I’d feel like a bitch if I just hung up the phone on a telemarketer? If I valued myself and my time enough to hang up the phone rather than listen to the 5 minute spiel about the product/cause that they’re selling that I’m not interested in? Admittedly, I do find the telemarketer thing extra hard to do, having worked in a call centre during my early 20s. I remember how it feels to be on the other end of the phone.
But, the same thing goes for all interactions. I’m going to need to consciously unlearn how to NOT be nice all the time.
Sometimes I like watching old grannies telling people off and think, “Good on them! I want to be like that when I grow up!”
I was on the receiving end of this one day, whilst I was working at the local retirement village. Trying to squeeze past a dear 89 year old woman, she told me quite frankly, “fuck off and go around the other way!” I nearly burst out laughing. I mean, it was brutal! There was no niceness about it, but she had a point. I simply wasn’t going to fit past her in her chair. Her dementia had removed any social filters about being nice, and in her old age and wisdom she now had full freedom of speaking her mind.
Shouldn’t we all be empowered with this freedom to speak our mind?
Granted, we probably don’t need to go around telling people to fuck off, but we can tell them where to go, when it’s required. We don’t have to be nice about it either, if we don’t want.
I still hold true that kindness is essential.
Being kind is something that I will always strive for, in myself and others.
We need more kindness in the world. Kindness, as in, the qualities of friendliness, consideration and generosity. There’s a big difference between kindness and niceness. Kindness is genuine. Niceness can be faked. Everyone should be raised to be kind. To themselves. To others. And to the world around them.
But I think I can let niceness go. I don’t need to be nice anymore. I don’t need my primary purpose in life to be about giving pleasure and satisfaction to others, or being agreeable or attractive. I also don’t need to wait to be a grumpy granny to speak my truth either.
I’d rather be kind than ignorant.
I hope you will too. May you enjoy hanging up the phone on the next telemarketer who calls you with something that you are uninterested in. May you be kind enough to tell them, “Thanks, but I’m not interested”. May you do so, guilt free, because you do not owe anyone your niceness. May you enjoy taking your power back, one spam call at a time. And may you please share your experiences with ‘not being nice’ with us when you’re done.
Much love to you,
MumOf3WRs