I love a good quote. Usually those few words are gems of wisdom that are so apropos for many situations we encounter. In fact, I’m sure there are plenty to describe the procrastination that is barring me from starting my homework right this minute, but I digress.
In an attempt to put off said homework, I was surfing the internet and came across the site called “The Quote Garden.” I started thinking about the insane week that I was desperately trying to close out and began to search for quotes on “kindness.” Let me just say that, at the moment, I am quite bitter over the abysmal week I had so these quotes were my cathartic attempt at regrounding and not pack my bags for Tahiti.
It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice. ~Author Unknown
Would someone puuuuhhhlleeeeeeaasse explain to me why some people who fill positions of authority, no matter how small, suddenly feel the urge to be utter jackasses? I mean, there is just no reason to be ugly to people no matter who you or they are. We teach our children to be nice. We teach them the golden rule or Hillel’s teaching or whatever the particular higher power we follow. So what happens between the time we learn that lesson as children until the time we grow up?
Treat everyone with politeness, even those who are rude to you - not because they are nice, but because you are. ~Author Unknown
As I eluded to earlier, my week has been peppered by lunatics. In the heat of the moment, I just long to make some smartass remark about their near-Neanderthal thought processes and, if truth be known, my palm itches to slap the bejeebers out of them. However, at the end of it all, I don’t. What do I do? I cry. Seriously, can you believe that? I cry not because someone hurt my feelings or I have some sense of self-pity. I cry because I am PISSED! And that fact makes me even more pissed – trust me, this is something that has even my shrink perplexed. Now here is the even crazier part. Whenever I next encounter them, I am actually nice to said party. I have friends who think I am crazy but you know what – my grandmother taught me that, just because someone was ugly to me, it didn’t mean that I had to stoop to their level. No matter the situation, I am a nice person. Let me also say that this has been a whopper to try to teach to my own children. After all, all is fair in playground law. If you take my bike, I take your Lego creation. You read my book, I can take up play where you stopped in your video game. This has been and continues to be a doozy to explain. I just try to model that behaviour and discuss it when ever I can. Any suggestions here might warrant a cup of coffee or a margarita as compensation, so PLEASE respond…
We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak. ~Epictetus
Kindness is the greatest wisdom. ~Author Unknown
Two of my pet peeves are the person who likes to hear his or her own voice and the person who thinks he or she knows everything. Does being condescending fall into one of those two categories or is that is something separate? I remember back to my single days when I had gotten laid off from my job in marketing at an electronics company. I was waiting tables to make ends meet and was working a lunch shift when I encounter two curmudgeons in suits. Every other word out of their mouths was “honey” or “sweetie” and was accompanied by that look that clearly implied that they thought I was less than stellar in the intelligence department. At one point during the lunch, they actually asked me if I thought about finding a husband and starting a family. So, me being me, lied for self-preservation and revenge. My answer to them was what on earth could I need those things for? I was working on my doctoral thesis that focused on the middle-age crisis of older men and what is was they lacked in their home life and that working at a restaurant afforded me a number of quality case studies. Needless to say, I left the table with each customer speechless. Okay, okay, since I’m preaching niceness; NO it clearly wasn’t nice of me but then again, they weren’t exactly following Miss Manners here either.
Don't be yourself - be someone a little nicer. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966
Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not. ~Samuel Johnson
As a parent, I try to teach my children that they should be nice to everyone regardless of their differences, situations, or circumstances. I also try to impart the knowledge that not everyone will be our best friend, but that doesn’t mean that we still can’t be nice. Unfortunately, these attitudes are sometimes not reciprocated. Over the past week, I have learned that, try as I might, not everyone is my friend. And for my liberal, Polly Anna outlook, that really sucks. Seriously, why can’t people just flippin’ get along? So fine, regardless of how anyone else acts, I am determined to be nice. I have to bite my tongue when someone really deserves a tongue-lashings, I smile when I want to glare, I shake hands when I want to knock the ever-living crap out of someone. And why? Because in my world, my beliefs, my traditions in which I was raised, that is what we do. We rise above the occasion to be the better person. This is what we teach our children no matter how hard. Clearly this wasn’t in the Cliff Notes version of Parenting. And quite frankly, with my personality and temperament, even if it was I probably would have skipped that chapter…
There is one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one's life - reciprocity. ~Confucius
In the end, we are all still human and would like to think that “paybacks are hell.” Unfortunately, and fortunately, we somehow move beyond the impulsive actions of toddlerhood to reserved and conscientious adults. Each time I see a toddler at school who is in the throws of a screaming-meemie fit, I am envious and think how lucky that child is for being able to so clearly express his or herself. Seriously, think about it – how cool would it be if every time you got mad you could throw yourself on the floor, while kicking and screaming at the top of your lungs? I really think the stress level would drop drastically and there would be a number of mental health professionals out of work. But at the end of the day, we teach our children to curb that impulse. We squelch whatever emotion we experience. And why? Because that is what we adults do. I really don’t think this is what I signed on to teach to my children. To back down and take their lashes. I know I need to teach them to get along, but at what cost? Am I teaching them to give in, back down, and give up? Or am I teaching them to rise up and over - to be the better person. Perhaps the last quote can offer some insight:
If you step on people in this life, you're going to come back as a cockroach. ~Willie Davis
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