Okay, I consciously gave this writing a provocative title. I am not saying that there are no nice people. And don’t get hung up on the gender specific noun guy. What I am really suggesting is that nice is an illusion, like everything else. Nice is a relationship or result or process; it is not a “thing”. Your Nice is not my Nice and today’s Nice may be unrecognizable next year. Nice flows from actions and relationships. So, what is nice?
Nice is a familiar feeling or collection of attributes or actions. We know nice….but it is not what we think it is. Nice could be thought of as simply being present. When someone is nice they are who they were always meant to be, sort of. They are their best self. They are their true self. And since everything is connected and duality itself is an illusion, they are us. Nice people cannot exist without the observer being in a state to receive the nice. If a nice guy trips and falls in a forest, does she make a sound?
Nice is also brave and generous and optimistic. If it were none of these things it would be too dangerous to be nice. We become nicer the more we give “it” away, the more frequently we are nice. Much like enlightenment, once we realize that we are nice or are trying to be nice we lose our nice. We have to rediscover it without searching for it. It is always there. It will always be inside us. Are we nothing but nice, except for the dynamic seed of “un-nice” that is always growing within every nice?
Is this writing anything different from any of the others? Is this just today’s way of saying be present. For the hundredth time, my plea for you to stop reading this and me to stop typing this and for both of us (though we are all just one really) to just bathe in presence. Is this just another long-winded way of saying don’t be afraid? I have never learned to give my last loaf of bread away, to one that I know to be much more in need of it than me. I have never learned to give away that last loaf even if I have one million other last loaves as well.
I really do get the projects to record sounds and ideas and importance as we understand it and beam it into outer-space. It is a bleating, a primal scream for the others to become our teacher and us to be allowed to be the student.
I had no idea where I was going when I woke up early today unable to sleep any further, but I am at least really content with where I am and what I feel. Maybe Nice is a pathway to hope or a celebration of what can always be or always is. Maybe we need to stop thinking of things that seem like nouns as nouns or consider everything to only exist in a state of verb or adverb or something? Of course, all of these things and the twenty-six letters used to approximate what I think I am trying to say are just sign posts built of mostly empty space. Maybe we just need to stop thinking. We definitely seldom need to try to be nice unless we think we want to and then maybe it is totally okay. Breathe (nicely) 😊
