To whom it may concern:
I, Bill, do hereby declare that from this day forth, the “I’m-too-nice-for-my-own-good” argument/complaint will no longer receive any sympathy from me.
This decision has been a long time in coming, lest you think I made it lightly. Rest assured I did not. I consider myself a fairly sympathetic person, so this was not an easy decision to make. But it was necessary.
In life, we make choices. Those choices affect our behavior. But all too often, we try to blame those choices on our tendencies and our nature, resulting in a simple excuse: “It’s my nature and thus I couldn’t control my behavior.” That, friends, is what we call a crock.
Say you’ve become acquainted with a person. Then say that the behavior of this new acquaintence of yours changes in such a way you dislike or feel is inappropriate. And perhaps, after communicating your feelings to said person, their behavior does not change, so you cut off communication entirely. It’s a logical progression of events.
But let’s add a twist, shall we? Suppose that several months after you cut off communication with this person, he or she gets in contact again to tell you about a new job they got. And this makes you mad because you had applied for the same job. But you choose to listen politely. And after listening politely to this person, he or she goes back to the behavior that upset you in the first place. And you again try to communicate that said behavior upsets you.
Here’s the final twist. Suppose, after communicating your feelings, said person tries to get you to forgive them, while you know full well they will not change. So what do you do?
Logically, you again cut off communication. You have no reason to continue communicating, right? But there are people who would go against logic and continue to communicate with this person in the vain hope that their behavior will change. Why? Because, they say, it’s their nature. They want to give people the benefit of the doubt despite not having a reason to. And they may say they can’t do anything else because of their nature. They might even say, “I’m too nice for my own good” or something akin to it.
News flash: Giving this person another chance is simply a choice. You could have chosen otherwise, but you did not. The choice is yours and thus you must live with it. And for crying out loud, please do not complain to me about it. I will tell you that you made a stupid choice. You will agree and try to justify it by blaming it on your nature. I will not be sympathetic. You will be mad at me for not being sympathetic and we will argue about it until one or both of us gets sick of arguing. It’s a waste of time.
Now, you might be wondering why I’m making this declaration now. It’s because of late, I’ve had too many of these futile arguments and have wasted a lot of time that I won’t get back. And so I’m saying here that I will no longer engage in these arguments and any attempt to engage me in said argument will not be successful. I’ll simply tell you that you made a stupid decision and shouldn’t have been so nice and that will be it.
There are times in life when it does not pay to be nice. When you are getting walked on, that’s not a time to be nice. When you feel someone is behaving inappropriately to you and won’t stop, that’s not a time to be nice. And choosing to be nice in such situations is a bad decision. We all make them and I’ll be sympathetic to the point that you acknowledge you did something stupid and you will learn from it. But if you attempt to justify a stupid decision with the “It’s my nature” argument and show no signs of learning from it, I can’t be so sympathetic.
Sincerely,
Bill
