Be Nice

New year came and gone. Then the Lunar came and gone too. I'm normally not big on resolution (because I can hardly keep them) but this year I strive just to be pleasant and be courteous to the people around me. With that, I hope it'd make their day just a bit brighter and breezier.

If there's one thing that I'm quick, it must that I've always been quick at getting mad over some little things in the mundane daily grind. A waiter getting my order mixed up or a colleague not holding the elevator door opened or a car not parking properly or the telephone repairman showing up 5 minutes late or a stranger not returning my smile. I'd have no qualms of letting them know my utter dismay through some snarky remarks. Sometimes hurtful even. 

And then so what? So fucking what? The truth is getting mad drives my BP through the roof. That is it!  My food would take longer to get to my table, I have to take the next elevator, another round around the car park for a parking space, no call for the next 5 minutes, and the stranger, oh how is a stranger not returning my smile affecting me? The predicament that I'm in, if I can even call it that, remains. Oh my snarky and hurtful remarks remedy absolutely nothing, just very likely making the other party feeling like shit. That is how people get driven apart and life become cold and miserable.

For the past 2 years I been working in a country on a dangerous brink of a civil war. I grew up in a country with a uber-sensitive undertow of social and racial strain. I've experienced first hand the devastation as a result of such a divide between people. It ain't pretty let me tell 'ya. If I could have a super power bestowed upon me, I would like to get people, family or friends or foes or strangers, just closer together. 

And the first step, is simply be nice. Just a gentle smile or an acknowledging nod, I believe, has the unimaginably magical power to move mountains and gravitate people towards each other. And then the rest will just be falling beautifully in place on their own.