About that house you live in…..

This is a plea for minimal snickering, at least, until you finish reading. After that, you’re on your own.

Ready? Have you contained your snickering inclinations to a gentle confinement? Alright. Here we go!

It is just sooooo boring to say I like being NICE to other folks. Just about anybody I meet or even pass. You see what I mean? Is that not truly boring? Niceness-city.

Ah, but here’s a reframe. (Yep, I am just so wont to reframe.) What if niceness is actually a pillar of being a change agent? An advocate for change who is a catalyst for transformation in our culture. This could be you! Maybe already is? You tell me….

Oh, you want an example? Sure. On the more rabid end of change agentry was the 1773 dumping of massive English tea barrels into Boston Harbor. (C’mon, you gotta know what I mean here, right? If not, I’d recommend that noble historian, Google, as your omniscient guide for knowing everything, all the time.)

Wait, wait, I have a weak back and throwing barrels of tea around just isn’t my thing. What’s ordinary, human-sized, change agentry for those of us with back issues, or have an aversion to starting wars. (I’m a Quaker, after all.)

Being nice will do it.

Uh oh, we seem to have a problem communicating. Being nice makes one a change agent? Really?

Damn right, it does. Being nice is change agentry, par excellence. Or, if you’re magically inclined (like me), consider the act of being nice as a magic wand. A magic wand, spritzing all and sundry, with the light of being acknowledged as another human being. How many of us walk in our world feeling unseen? Too many. “Being nice” change agentry is low hanging fruit (incredibly low) for warming hearts and making someone’s eyes shine more brightly because they’ve been seen and acknowledged. I mean, does it get better than that?

Well, there is dark chocolate….

Aside from that, the dark chocolate, I mean, a little voice in my head just asked if “being nice” is generic change agentry? In other words, cheap? Please, give me a break! I’m going to blow off that self-inquiry with a quote from Hafiz, the late Persian poet.

“The words you speak become the house you live in.”

I’m feeling quite fond of my house, at the moment. And, you?