For some, "nice" is another "n" word

I'm more than willing to accept the fact that my hipness factor is non-existent and I fly below the radar of popular culture. I do not really know how to turn on my TV and the fact that I can stream from Netflix to my laptop does not redeem me.

So maybe I have missed the e-alert that says rudeness is the new form of social discourse with absolute strangers you will never, ever even meet at a cocktail party.

Some background: I got connected, without my consent or knowledge, to a national group of Lutheran clergy who post questions and subsequent threads on Facebook. For the most part I find it interesting, even helpful--there have been a couple of times when I have posted questions and gotten a stream of thoughtful, useful responses.

But lately I've noticed a tendency for some people to--let me put it sensitively--become querulous. Let me put it not so sensitively: they become snotty, bratty, cutting and rude.

Responding to one thread questioning whether or not it was good practice to wear a clerical shirt and collar when on a family outing, I became incredulous at the charges volleyed across FB gunwales. This person was being "snarky," that person was being "bombastic." And sheesh, this is all about some bloody collar?

So I posted, "Everybody, play nice. I don't see what's to get upset about."

And apart from the fact that I ended my sentence in a preposition, I still don't. Though clearly I was wrong.

One person responded by saying that "'playing nice' is born of angst: anxiety, fear, dread and shame are at the root of playing nice, because playing nice is the sharade [sic] called avoidance."Another said that niceness implies superficiality, falseness and pretending--the latter two being the same thing, yes? But not necessarily nice....Yet another poster quoted Beyond Nice by Patricia Davis: "niceness is the opposite of spirituality" (for which another yet poster responded with "Amen to that"). Some pro-and-anti "nice" banter ensued during which I was silent because....because, really?

When I finally did respond to say that I didn't think we needed to check our senses of humor at the door and that I also didn't like having my spirituality judged by someone who knows absolutely nothing about me, I was met with--well, I hate to say it--a snarky asssessment of my motivation in writing and the further declaration by this clergyperson that she feels no need to be nice in this forum.

Well, let me just say right here and now that my late, flamboyant, rule-flouting, beautiful red-headed mother would not cotton to anyone saying that they ever had a right to feel they didn't need to be nice. At any time. That is, unless you were being seriously insulted. "You catch more flies with honey," she always used to say. And, simple girl that I am, I think she was right.

But maybe I'm out of touch. Maybe it's become chic to be snarky if you believe you're right. Maybe it's cool to be rude. Who knows? I never really know what's trending now, apart from the Kardashians, who are always, unfortunately, trending now.

And yet I do wonder how rude and snarky will fare in growing congregations....

Give us pleasure in the flowers today......

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;

And give us not to think so far away

As the uncertain harvest; keep us here

All simply in the springing of the year.

                                                --Robert Frost

               

Last night I sat with friends in my backyard eating and talking and drinking until well-past sunset. There were tiny new potatoes and ears of sweet corn. And fresh-picked strawberries, blueberries and biscuits, still warm. There was whipped cream sweetened with dark maple syrup. And I was wearing a billowy skirt made of bright bands of color—watermelon and coral and rose.

The air was heavy and it threatened to rain. But the rain didn’t come, only warm winds that made the candles flicker like an image in a flipbook.

Happiness, I’ve decided, is a matter of the microcosmic. To be happy is to be, however fleetingly, undistracted from all that you taste or see or smell or touch or hear. To be happy is to know that, yes, pain is both relative and absolute. But happiness is just as real.

I remember being ten, the day of my sister’s wedding. I had been a bridesmaid. Yes, a bridesmaid! That had to mean I was important. And I got to wear pantyhose and shoes with little heels. I was almost a woman.

After the ceremony we got into our cars to drive around and around. People still used to honk their car horns for newlyweds and as we drove the air filled with lovely, staccato beeping. I couldn’t have said why, but all of a sudden I felt so happy I thought I’d burst right out of the lime-green satin bridesmaid gown my mother had made for me to wear.

But then, like a slap in the face, came dread: It would end, this happiness. There would be not simply the things of daily life, but the awful things of our sometimes-tragic lives. I hated the happiness. It scared me. I didn’t want to remember, later, what it felt like to feel so good.

I know better now.  I know that happiness is small. Large enough, but still small.

I know, too, that there is no logic in happiness. The things designed to make us feel great sometimes feel like chores—another year of Christmas shopping, another vacation to plan, another room to redecorate.

Other times, what makes us cry makes us happy—a poem so gorgeous your voice cracks trying to read it, the shape of your daughter’s neck when her hair is upswept, Elvis Costello singing “My Funny Valentine.”

And, like they say a woman forgets the pain of labor—a myth, by the way—I do think we forget we were happy. So when we are happy again, it catches us off-guard. It is new each time. There is never anything but this moment of happiness. The poet Galway Kinnell writes,

Kiss
the mouth
which tells you, “here,
here is the world.” This mouth. This laughter. These temple bones.
With happiness there is nothing more to be done than to really be in it.

We can’t photograph it with our hearts and when we speak about happiness we have to reduce it to the dimensions of metaphors.

The other night there was a firefly in my bedroom. It was like having a traveling star in the room, brilliant sparkles in unexpected places. I lay there thinking, happiness is like this firefly—both unpredictable and certain.

Of course, I was all wrong. Happiness isn’t like a firefly. Or a rainbow or any kind of silly metaphor. Happiness isn’t like anything. It simply is—a span of randomly-timed seconds, the time in which we know, past doubting, we are awake and alive.

Inspired by Walt Whitman's, "The Sleepers" (but MUCH shorter!)

www.times-union.com

 

 Saratoga: Fourth of July

To the man carrying the newborn in two hands, like an offering,

To the ten-year-old busker with skinny legs and too-big guitar,

To the gay couple at the hot sauce store gauging the heat index,

Happy Fourth!

To the man in black loafers, no socks and gold chain,

To the slim-faced girl in her spotless smock at the cheese shop,

To the panting pug on his leash and his obedient follower,

Happy Fourth!

To the iced-coffee-carrying ingénue in fishnets and shorts,

To the pierced pedant in black with his dog-earred Ulysses (why today?),

To the seller of gelato belting out Verdi and scooping stracciatella,

Happy Fourth!

To the little girl who cries as her pink balloon floats skyward and away,

And to the little boy who says, “Hey, Dad, look!” and “Hey, Dad, look!”

To the moon-faced toddler in her stroller, beaming and effulgent,

Happy Fourth!

To the carousel horses on their appointed rounds,

To the waterspout fountain gods, Spit and Spat,

To the antique cars, buffed and shiny, lining the park,

Happy Fourth!

Before the rain comes, which it will,

Before the sun sets, which it will,

Before the last shop closes and the lights go out,

Happy Fourth,

Tarry on,

Happy Fourth.