What's the difference between nice, kind, friendly, and good?
Do I want to be any of them?
First, I do not feel nice, friendly, kind, or good to myself as I write this. I am disappointed that I have not maintained a regular, weekly posting schedule and have not followed my editorial plan for Creator Luminosity. Life has been busy, hectic, and full, but alas, it has also been filled with wasted hours of scrolling, streaming, and not creating. So there’s that.
Not long ago, I had a conversation with my cousins. We talked about being too nice, that we were raised to be too nice. "Good girl, nice." "Don’t make waves, nice." "Do your job, nice.”
Then, in my scrolling, I saw the quote that’s been going around, supposedly attributed to Matthew McConaughey, who said he came across a quote that said:
My life got better when I realized I didn’t have to be nice. Nice got me used, stressed out and disrespected. I’m not nice. I’m a good person. You don’t have to be nice to be a good person. Being good means being honest, setting boundaries, and taking care of yourself without compromising your values. Being nice may get you temporary approval, but it rarely earns you respect or helps you build genuine connections. Honor your truth. You won’t regret being a good person.
So, being nice is bad? I thought. Does it make life more difficult? Wait. What? I thought I was supposed to be nice. What is nice? What does that even mean? Why have I spent so much of my life valuing being nice?
Definition: Nice, displaying pleasant or agreeable behavior, acceptable or satisfactory.
Um, that doesn’t sound so great. It sounds passive, malleable, and satisfactory. I know I wrote about being average and being okay with it. But it was about being substantive. Is being nice like the southern saying, “Well, bless your heart,” something condescending?
What do you think about good? What does being good mean? Being a good person?
Definition: Good, beneficial, advantageous, appropriate, morally virtuous, obedient, respected, enjoyable, satisfying, pleasant, and thorough.
Please remove the obedient part. Being good sounds better than being nice, though I’m not sure the meaning is as the quote above defines it. Setting boundaries? Taking care of oneself? Not compromising values? I suppose being morally virtuous means one does not compromise values, standing up for what is right and what one believes.
Being good means creating favorable circumstances that increase the chance of success or effectiveness. Is being good beneficial? Who wants to be merely good? Don’t we want to be great? Have the ability and eminence considerably above the normal or average? Shoot for the moon and land among the stars kind of goals. But good can also be meh. “Good for you” has a snarky tone to it sometimes.
I prefer to be kind and friendly instead of nice or good; these terms and their meanings are backed with more substance.
Definition: Kind, genuine benevolence and compassion, a friendly, generous, and considerate nature
Definition: Friendly, kind, pleasant, and expressing liking, goodwill, or trust.
As I pondered all this, I was struck by the lyrics from a Dave Matthews Band song—Squirm.
Above all things
If kindness is your king
Then heaven will be yours
Before you meet your end.
In Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4, Hamlet tells his mother, the Queen, some bitter truths. He then states: “I must be cruel only to be kind.”
Must he? Isn’t Gertrude drinking the poison at the end, intended for Hamlet, somewhat ironic? Is it karma for killing her husband, the king, and sleeping with his brother? She cannot overcome her guilt. She descends into madness, and in many ways, Hamlet pushes her there. (Though he also appears to be losing it, seeing ghosts, and of course, Ophelia goes crazy too, and everyone dies. It’s Shakespeare.) So, cruelty was not so kind.
Then there’s the Nick Lowe song, released in 1979:
Good is better than nice. Nice is people-pleasing. Nice is how we act, so people will like us. Nice is our obligation. Kind is genuine. If kindness rules your life, then you create a bit of heaven in which to exist, and sometimes, cruelty is kind. This is the bitter truth. This is the harsh reality. Or is it just our human way to convince ourselves that our cruelty is somehow benevolent? Yes. I think so. Cruelty is not kind in any form or fashion.
All these thoughts have me squirming.