Being Nice vs Being Kind: How they're different and why it matters

For years I've been really bothered by nice people. I've always had a very low tolerance for them. To put it bluntly, they annoy the shit out of me. For years the reasons for this were always really ineffable to me, but I believe now that I've gotten it properly sorted out. You see, while I have a very low tolerance for nice people I have great respect and admiration for people who I perceive as being very kind, and I believe that there is a real difference between these two things.

Nice people always strike me as either being disingenuous or ignorant. They operate from a place of cowardice, always trying to spare people from harsh truths, that or they're putting on a facade to get what they want from people (manipulation), be it approval or something material. In my book when someone says, "I was just trying to be nice", this is not a good defense of one's actions and you'll notice they always say it when they've been caught satisfying one of the prerequisites for being nice; either cowardice, ignorance, or in trying to gain something from someone. I do not have (m)any nice friends.

What I do have are some very kind friends. Kind people, by contrast, are very brave. To be kind requires, at a minimum, a certain sort of moral intelligence. By this I mean an ability to properly negotiate moral situations. Kind people operate out of compassion for their fellow man, and a kind action is not one that operates solely out of a place of self preservation (cowardice) or self interest (manipulation and approval seeking). Some of my kindest friends have said the things that have been the most difficult for me to swallow. Where people who are being nice prefer to spare my feelings, people who are being kind never hesitate to deliver a harsh truth that is meant to help me.


Kind people don't lie to make you FEEL better, they are honest and frank with you in an attempt to get you to BE better, and are relatable in this way, at least for me that is. I cannot relate to nice people, and this is because I feel like I can't be honest and frank with nice people, and I never have. To put it another way, some of the nicest people I know will never say the word "fuck" and you never feel as though you could ever say it to them, while some of the kindest people I know could be misconstrued with sailors at times. While this shouldn't be a hard and fast rule to tell the difference between nice and kind people, you only notice this trend because it gets to the root of that difference. Nice people act out of an aversion to unpleasantness, even of language, while kind people act out of honesty and compassion without regard to how pleasant or unpleasant something may or may not be.

Some added credence to my opinions on this is an article I found subsequent to drawing this conclusion. It's written by a psychiatrist on The Huffington Post.  In the article Dr. Sirota writes, "kindness emerges from someone who's confident, compassionate and comfortable with themselves. A kind person is loving and giving out of the goodness of their heart. At the root of extreme niceness, however, are feelings of inadequacy and the need to get approval and validation from others. Overly-nice people try to please so that they can feel good about themselves."

In summation, don't go around trying to please everyone and avoiding unpleasantness. It may be nice, but it's certainly not kind and it's definitely not productive. In the end being nice hurts more things than it helps. Nice people can ruin the world, with their self serving apathy and endless appetite for keeping things pleasant and meeting with the approval of others. I never have had the stomach for them, and hopefully I never will. Be kind, even if you have to be cruel to do it, because everyone you know (as well as everyone you don't know) is fighting a hard battle and they could use your help and your compassion, your kindness if you will, a hell of a lot more than they could use a few petty, nice sentiments.