Janny Appleseed
Nice, nice, nice! Enough already with this being nice stuff!
What’s this enough already thing? Being nice is, well,… nice. How strikingly ordinary of me but I do, truly, like being nice. Got something against that?
Yes, I do! You’re very, consciously, affecting a nice voice with others. Kind of like play-acting, really. OK, OK, I’ll just say it. You’re faking a nice voice, as if you were an actor in a play. Not authentic! Come on, why the heck are you not being authentic? The search for authenticity has been central to your life‘s journey. Hasn’t it?
You bet. Authenticity is and will continue to be a cornerstone of my human odyssey. Nonetheless, I’ve learned a few things along the way. (Also called growing up.)
What the heck do you mean? “You’ve learned a few things along the way.“ Does that mean other values subjugate your longtime intention of authenticity?
Nope. Nope, to subjugating the importance of authenticity in my life. No way! HOWEVER, I’ve also discovered that building an incremental bridge of human connection to others (some of whom I may find distasteful) isn’t always served by my spoken authenticity. Example: “What the heck kind of outfit are you wearing?! You just bought 5 expensive lottery tickets? Oh, please, please don’t buy chewing tobacco!“
You get my drift? Other humans doing things of which this particular human disapproves. (I, of course, am all-knowing. Wink, wink.)
Going all out, now. Under the rubric of not bothering to even be nice, or connect, are folks who fall into my neutral category. Don’t know, or have only a very tangential contact with them. I’m inhabiting, very briefly, the same space as another human being. On the phone, in person. It’s my neutral land of “do I really need to connect?” You get the drill?
On full display now, we have my conflicted belief in offering truly authentic niceness within two categories of folks: those I may find disagreeable, or other humans who happen to just be passerby’s in my life. I’ve accused myself of faking being nice, or, even worse in my book, inauthentic in these two very large categories of my life.
Help! Authenticity reality test! Is it authentic to act nice with folks who I find disagreeable, or with those just flitting through my life (which actually covers most of the human population, doesn’t it?) Have I completely fallen off my authenticity horse? (You don’t need to answer that.)
“The smallest act bears the seed of boundlessness…One deed, sometimes one word, suffices to change every constellation.” Hannah Arendt
Is it synchronicity, magic, or ouija board, when the universe drops an answer for which I’ve been searching right into my thirsty mind? Who cares. There’s magic in the unknowable. Intentionally planting seeds of connection, the results of which I may never know, fills me with joy. (Hey, I do have extra seeds…)