Hummusgirl's Blog

I’ve been thinking a lot about why people feel the need to be nice. I think a lot of times it’s counterintuitive. It’s so important to be intelligent that when we strive for niceness at all times, we lose that intellectual sharpness. I don’t really understand this need to be nice all the time in retail environments and elsewhere. Niceness does not equal kindness in a lot of cases and it defintely doesn’t equal support a lot either. I feel that it stems from mental health issues in this country and the lack of understanding of those issues and also school shootings and the deteriorating school system.

I personally try so hard to be authentic and kind and I feel that it’s misunderstood a lot of the time. There’s a Michael Moore documentary that came out about 5 years ago called, “Where to Invade Next” about countries around the world that have better policies in some areas then the US. One prevalent issue in a lot of countries is education and how school prices in the US go up all the time and no one pays attention while free education is considered a right in places like Canada, some European countries, and elsewhere. I get so scared for this country, USA, especially these days with mass protests, an unstable government, a neglected health care system that is certainly distressed these days, and racism, just to name a few. But I always try to fight for my mental health, even if it means feeling unconfortable.

I feel that because of the many issues the USA has, we get so scared, that we lose some of our intellect and our only recourse is to be nice. If that’s all we have, our niceness, which more often than not, acts like meanness too, than what’s the point in living? We need to fight for our right to think clearly and intellectually, not be defeneseless when we might seem like we’re losing our battles with our mind and thus the world.

I think also, that we have a severe lack of empathy in this country, replaced by niceness. I read a sign at a Women’s March a couple years ago, saying, “Legalize Empathy.” That really spoke to home. We don’t know how to be empathetic anymore. It’s too scary now. I used to be a regular contributor on Facebook up until 6 months ago, and sometimes I think we use Facebook to get our all our frustrations (I did that) because it’s too scary to do it in real life.

I have some mental health problems, (as some of you might have deduced) and I try to so hard to work around them and use them to my advantage, both intellectually and authentically. I read an article in a mental health magazine years ago saying that the reason this country has so many mentally ill people so to speak is because they have a certain type of personality that makes many of us susceptible to mental health issues.

We need to realize the need to be educated about mental health, because in some ways, we already know a lot more about these issues than we’ll ever admit to. Some might say that we don’t need to change the mental health system, but I say, in the name speaking your mind against “niceness” and being more kind and authentic, we need to know our mental health needs come before this niceness destroys all that we hold dear and precious about being human!!