I am a Mean Person — The Three Things I Learned About Being Nice
Casey Neistat once said, “It’s a lot easier to be mean than it is to be nice. Mean people, on top of being jerks, are also lazy and they’re uninventive. Being nice takes work.”
A more accurate description of my former self has never been stated.
I was a bully growing up, admittedly so. I did terrible things to nice people and didn’t think twice about the pain I might have caused them. So many people from my childhood only have memories of the mean things I did to them. I find it tough to go home and see them at all because I know the things I have done to them were not to be taken lightly.
I was not a physical bully per se. I did get into physical fights growing up, but my method was much more verbal and psychological. I somehow knew what to say to each person to create some devastatingly embarrassing situation for them to be in. People would laugh at their misfortune, and that laughter was my fuel.
My bullying ways didn’t stop when I was a child though. I found myself doing adult-versions of what I did as a child to other adults. The results were usually much worse though. When you are a ‘grown-up’ things tend to break a lot easier when you're body gets slammed into them, which is what happened to me on a few occasions when I picked the wrong person to make fun of.
As I got older, I became smarter, more learned. My vocabulary grew. I knew how to better insult people. Somehow becoming more articulate also allowed for a more horrendous stream of insults with which to taunt and debase the people around me.
I seemed to plague any group I was apart of with my jibes and banter. It was ‘just a laugh’ for me, but it was horrible for everyone else. This somehow never seemed to bother me though, it was as if I didn’t even see that I was doing anything wrong.
This all changed one night about 3 years ago. I was talking to one of my best friends at work and a girl that I had never met before came up to me and asked my name.
Suspiciously, I told her who I was. She told me about how she had heard stories about me from people I grew up with in Australia. She recounted a terrible story of bullying that I had been involved in. I laughed and turned to my friend, a grin spread across my face, and said, “I’m famous!”.
He laughed in my face and replied, “No mate, you’re notorious!”
This small assertion was enough for me to understand something about myself that I had never understood before. I wasn’t popular or well thought of. People knew me by my actions, not because my actions were nice, kind, or good, but because they were mean, hurtful, and bad.
It was at this time that I met my wife. She is the nicest, kindest, most thoughtful and considerate person I have ever known. She is caring, she doesn’t speak badly of people, she is not judgemental and, best of all, she has taught me to no longer be the bully I had grown up to be!
This was not an easy learning curve for me at all. My bullying ways were so set in stone that it took more than just being told, “Hey, that’s not very nice” before I finally started to change my ways.
Over time though I was able to learn that I didn’t need to make fun of people everywhere I went. It wasn’t funny to tease someone or tell a ‘lighthearted’ joke about their appearance.
Years went by and we moved away to Europe. Suddenly I was learning to speak German and I didn’t even know how to be mean to someone in this new language, let alone ask for directions!
Being kind and polite has become a way of life for me now. People began to think of me as a nice, quiet man, instead of the loud, rambunctious boy I was for most of my life.
Whenever I have seen people I knew before, they’ve been shocked at how different I had become. They would talk to me in a vulgar way, expecting me to take part in their strange, invalidating talk about people that we knew well!
This led me to see that I had left a mark on everyone I had interacted with in the past. My years of speaking badly to people, bullying them, making fun of them and just generally being unkind had a lasting impression:
I was a mean person.
There was nothing I could do about it either. Besides flying back to the USA and showing them all that I had changed, and even then there was no way to repair some of the damage that I have done. I had called people some unforgivable names. I had told people things about their appearance that I couldn’t take back.
So that was it. I was, and always will be, a mean person.
I had to come to terms with that and I will forever live with the pain that I caused. There is no taking it back. I often read stories of others meeting their childhood bullies, but I was the childhood bully. It’s a sad thing to reflect on, but it is also my reality.
The best I can do now is change, which I have. I really make an effort to be polite and kind. I don’t engage in gossip, I’m not interested in other’s flaws and I only allow myself to comment on others when it is something polite or nice. I don’t even give constructive criticism unless it is asked of me because honestly, who am I to tell others what I think?
What I have learned in the three years of being nice to people:
- Sometimes I still think mean thoughts about people.
I’m not an angel, people are still annoying, but that little (or big) part inside of me that told me to let that person know what I really think is gone.
I used to have an uncontrollable desire to tell everyone what I thought about them or what they were doing. I knew the consequences of what I was going to say was probably not going to be good, but I said it anyway.
Nowadays, although I still feel and think this way sometimes, I have squashed that burning desire out of existence and I can control myself to either not think that way, or not say it if I do have a not-so-nice thought.
2. Being nice is hard, but it’s also really easy.
At first, it was tough to be nice to everyone. There were so many people I was convinced that I hated. My wife would always ask me, “Why?” when I told her that I hated someone. Most of the time I didn’t even know.
3. Nice guys don’t finish last.
I wouldn’t be where I am today without my good behavior and nice demeanor. Moving to Germany and being thrust into a culture that doesn’t speak the same language was very humbling.
I couldn’t express my opinions on new people for a very long time. It was from this though, that I learned that being polite and kind to others will usually get you a much warmer and kinder reception from them.
Now that I can be nice in two languages instead of just one, I can absolutely attest that it is really the nicest way to live and deal with others.
Who has time to be angry all the time anyway?
