Wednesday, September 5, 2007

The art of being nice



Things will definitely change over time and it is stupid to think that what is now is going to be the same in five years. I look at life as different chapters in a book. A chapter in my life has just ended and a new one is begining. If I would try to keep a chapter open in the future, that just might get written the way I want it to get written now, I am just beeing dishonest to myself. You cant step down in the same brook twice.

Somebody said "Life is too short to learn German" and I concur. Life is too short. But I think life can be twice as fullfilling if you share it with somebody you love. And I want a fullfilling life. Just like everybody else.

So to keep living my fullfilling life I am reading a book called "The art of beeing nice" (Konsten att vara snäll av Stefan Einhorn). Funny enough my mother gave me the book at the very moment I was begining to doubt if there ever is a meaning of being nice. I was begining to think that nice people never get what they want and that they just get used. But this is not true according to the book. A nice person is more likely to succeed because people want to work with them and they are kept as a kind of top-of-mind when it comes to people you want to keep contact with. So is it much harder being nice? I think so. It takes a lot more intelligence and strength because a nice person has to be careful of not getting used by others and at the same time be good at taking ethical decisions. An ethical decisions is based on knowledge of what is concidered right and wrong, being true to what you want, feeling empathy towards others and finally what the result will be of the decision.

The picture is of Karl and his wife at their swedish wedding. He invited me after not talking to each other for 15 years! We had no hard feelings it just became that way after we finished high school in Paris. Karl moved to the Phillipines (where he met his lovely wife) and I went back to Sweden. But still he remembered me after all those years and I was very happy to get the invitation to their wedding.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I agree with your first opinion that there's no point in 'just' being nice to other people. People dó tend to take advantage of truely nice persons.
And there's nothing genuine about only being nice to achieve what you want... that and the fact that the world is already filled with hypocrites.
And life IS too short to waste time on fake people!