Creating a Culture of Niceness
When at times it feels further away than ever…
It’s nice to be nice.
Amongst my huge compendium of goals, I’m trying to be nice-r.
Define nice. Well, may I recall the ideals of motherhood that I grew up with. Think Fairy adverts where the mum gently tweaks her sons nose with some suds, think Dumbo’s mum (or don’t unless you want to have a minor breakdown over that bit where she was locked up) and think boundless patience, infinite hugs and packed lunches. So you see, niceness is something I’ve long associated with mothers.
Yet in a way, it’s a part of the role I wasn’t really prepped for. You don’t really get instructions on how to be nice. But it makes a lot of sense to me now, when I consider it to be one of the things I struggled with the most.
Early motherhood is the definition of selflessness. It is sleep deprivation, pressure on physical and emotional health, and an inability to recognise one’s own needs before those of the child’s. As a result, the capacity to simply be nice seems to dwindle quite substantially. Or it did for me, anyway.
The wailing alarm that was, and sometimes still is, my children prompted reflexive actions that I sometimes felt I had no control over. After barking orders at my husband or mother, in the presence of a screaming child usually might I add, I cannot count the amount of times I have clamped my hand over my mouth or even cried over this monster that I’ve been reduced to.
This isn’t me, I’d whimper to myself.
I’ve screamed myself hoarse too. At least twice. Having never been a “screamer”, I’ve been horrified at the feelings of anger and rage that raising children has brought out in me - when I’ve always felt my identity was so closely entwined with being “nice”.
Nice people don’t scream, surely?
The trad wives movement utterly confounded me. My instagram feed at one point was filled with women who lived to serve their husbands and children with a suspiciously fixed smile at all times. I cursed myself for watching the reels in full, as the algorithm shifted to show me more of these peculiar women.
How could they do ALL that and still be nice, I wondered? They can’t surely have the energy to be that happy.
Motherhood is, without doubt, a gruelling and relentless task. Obviously, it is also rewarding and filled with love and happiness blah blah blah - but not every day!
My recent campaign towards self-improvement (an enjoyable and uplifting pursuit, I assure you) has considered the importance of niceness as a personal quality. Because, ultimately, I don’t want to be mean. I don’t want my children’s memories to be of a dragon or the only exchanges with my husband to be abrupt orders or complaints.
As part of this drive towards kindness, I am acknowledging why I wasn’t nice and it feels imperative to say to myself that: it’s ok, it’s fine that you weren’t nice. In fact, it’s more than understandable given the circumstances, and in order to be nice now, you need to forgive yourself. What you said or did wasn’t really you, because the rest of you was far too busy doing a really rather important job of raising tiny humans.
So I do want to tell more mothers that it’s ok to not be nice because you probably won’t be not nice forever, you’ll have more sleep and time to eat and be you and then it will be easier to be nice. We weren’t told this, but we should have been.
The irony is, however, that being nice to others seems to subsequently be the most beneficial for me. My consciously is generally clean. I clamp my hand no more. I receive kindness in return from my husband, who seems a little more inclined to do favours in return and has even started giving me compliments.
It isn’t always easy to be nice. Some days, I feel tired or premenstrual, and others my children might be particularly wearing - and I take more deep breaths at these times. But funnily enough, making the choice to think nicer things about others and just be more compassionate in general, leaves me feeling lighter at the end of the day and I go sleep less anxiously as a result. So then I have more energy to be nice the next day too.
Right, I’m off to listen to Tupac’s Changes again. Have a good week.