By Mark Antony Rossi
I’m old enough now is be suspicious of nice people. They recall handsome cars with empty gas tanks. Beautiful felines of exotic breeding fully spaded. An elegant hunting rifle with no bullets. My experience with nice people involves a series of interactions often resulting in disappointment. Nice is not bad in the traditional sense of the word. But nice frequently lacks grit and determination to see anything through.
Nice people are not direct dealers. Which I imagine is a selling point for people who like to form various types of relationships with them. The dark side of nice is they are not confrontational and anything you want to get done is not going be done through them. They are too busy being nice to stand up to unfairness or too polite to move important matters forward. But they are real nice. Thank you.
One of the toughest lessons of life is learning that people who get things done (for the good and for the bad) are not nice people. They may be rough on the edges yet they understand niceness is anything but productive and therefore accomplishes little for anyone counting on results. “Nice guys finish last,” is not merely a quaint saying. It deserves to be a maxim to remind the masses of the need for gumption to push forward issues demanding resolution.
The reality of nice is a passiveness unwilling to challenge power. And this is the fundamental problem with life in general. Whether it be in the family, the work place, the government or society those unwilling to take action effect no real positive change in life. What’s the point of nice if everyone around you is being treated poorly and suffering. Smiling is not a strategy.
Each soul willing to take action eventually become leaders. It’s not a coincidence that leaders are not nice people. Again, l’ve learned to be weary of the nice ones. For all that niceness comes with a price that others must pay to make this world better. Nice people don’t pay it. They are the pretty decorations; not the dirty decorators.
About the Author: Mark Antony Rossi is a poet, playwright and author of the bioethics volume “Dark Tech” now available from Amazon. His most recent plays have been produced in Liverpool and New York.
http://ethical-stranger.webnode.com/