Just Too Nice

"You're just too nice," she said it like a revelation, but it was a phrase I've been hearing since the first grade. Usually right before or after, "Speak up. I can't hear you." 

I wonder when "nice" became a derogatory term. When it got grouped in with words like pushover and passive and spineless. When did we start treating any sign of softness as a fault needing to be cured?

Too nice, not assertive enough, naive – all ways that the world has thought of to tell gentle people that their softness is weakness. We have been told, in so many different ways and at so many different times, that the only way to survive our world is by going out and taking what is due to us. Nice guys finish last. Strength is never taking no for an answer. Don't give up. Don't give in. Be aggressive. Speak up. Be the squeaky wheel. Play the game. 

Words like gentle and humble and gracious and tender are treated like synonyms for helpless.

I want to change this narrative. I want to draw firm lines separating the weakness of passive acceptance and the strength of showing grace and understanding even while we are ignored or passed over or taken for granted. Let's notice and appreciate the people who are relentlessly kind to us when we deserve it the least. Let's be slower to react, slower to defend our actions, quicker to listen, quicker to forgive. 

Let me be clear– we should never accept being treated as expendable or less than fully human. We should not silence ourselves to keep from inconveniencing someone else. If something is wrong or hurts you or devalues who you are, speak up and don't stop speaking until it changes. 

And this is where we enter a territory I don't know how to put into words. Maybe because I don't know how to do this myself yet. How can you be strong and honest when everything inside you longs for harmony and peace? How do you embrace all the richness of a personality that seeks unity at all times, while being true to your equally firm belief that some things are categorically wrong?  

So that is where I find myself as we hurtle quickly into 2018. Trying my best to treat everyone around me with kindness while struggling to identify the point at which I need to worry less about everyone's feeling and more about saying what needs to be said. And trusting that by God's grace I will learn to tell the difference. 

Where does 2018 find you so far?