Kindness vs. Niceness
This subject was brought up with me by a colleague, recently.
Whereas 'Kindness' is born of a sincere expression of your self and your compassion, 'Niceness' is tends to involve repressing what we really think and feel so as to 'spare' the feelings of others, or to avoid rocking the boat, so to speak. In North American society, we are taught to value Niceness over Kindness as a matter of course. I might go so far as to say that we are in fact taught to believe that kindness is cruel, as expressing our real feelings and thoughts may hurt the feelings of others, even though we may be trying to help them.
If we are living in true honesty with the world then, we need to relearn how to treat one another and give up being nice in order to be truly kind.
Whereas 'Kindness' is born of a sincere expression of your self and your compassion, 'Niceness' is tends to involve repressing what we really think and feel so as to 'spare' the feelings of others, or to avoid rocking the boat, so to speak. In North American society, we are taught to value Niceness over Kindness as a matter of course. I might go so far as to say that we are in fact taught to believe that kindness is cruel, as expressing our real feelings and thoughts may hurt the feelings of others, even though we may be trying to help them.
If we are living in true honesty with the world then, we need to relearn how to treat one another and give up being nice in order to be truly kind.