Why I Quit Being Nice

When I graduated high school, a friend said something to me I’ll never forget. She said, “Ally, you’re so nice. You might be the nicest person I know. I’ve never heard anyone say a bad word to or about you. Never change.”

Honesty, it felt like the highest compliment I could ever receive. I took it as a personal challenge to be “nice” forever.

I did my best to “never change.”

Then, ten years later, I got an e-mail from a girl I didn’t remember from high school. A classmate of ours had recently passed away, and she and I crossed paths at the funeral. Seeing me again reminded her of a story.

She asked if I remembered a day, sophomore year, when I was walking up the stairs with two of my friends, and a girl in front of us tripped. She asked if I remembered what my two friends said to that girl, that they laughed and made fun of her under their breath, and that the girl ran off, crying.

Worst of all, she asked if I remembered what I did next. I stood back, she told me, eyes wide, and mouth shut. I didn’t tease. Didn’t laugh. Wasn’t mean. But I didn’t say anything to her, or to my friends.

She asked me if I knew she was that girl.

I read the words over and over, to see if the memory would come back, but it wouldn’t. I felt a little panicked, actually, trying to summon at least a fuzzy movie in my mind, so I could offer some explanation for why I had done such a thing. I was nice after all. I was the nice girl. Why would the nice girl do something like that?

In that moment, a painful realization came crashing over me: niceness isn’t everything.

For so many years I worked hard to be nice, trying to live up to that story my friend had told about me. In one sense, it felt good and right and admirable to be the kind of person who never said a bad word about anyone else, and who never gave anyone reason to say a bad word about me.

But now, as I thought through the past ten years of my life, I realized being “nice” wasn’t doing for me what I wanted it to do.

Being “nice” was preventing me from saying what I thought about things.

It prevented me from telling my friends that I thought laughing at someone for tripping on the stairs was rude (for fear of being too harsh or judgmental) and prevented me from telling the girl who tripped that I knew how she felt. I’d been laughed at, too.

I wouldn’t want that girl to feel like I was singling her out, or overstepping my bounds.

I wouldn’t want my friends to feel like I was rejecting them.

It prevented me, years later, from expressing political opinions or theological opinions or even opinions about where I wanted to eat dinner — which in turn prevented me from having authentic, meaningful relationships with people. In some cases, friends would beg me to say what I thought, but instead of being honest, I would mimic those around me, and then (of course) feel invisible.

When you can’t tell the truth about yourself, you cease to exist as a person.