Niceness

"It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice." -- John Cassis
How many times have you felt a sense of importance?
Did your ego swell up the size of the state of Texas?
Like the credo says, though, it's more important to be nice.
I've made more friends in a myriad of locales because I was just being myself, a nice guy.
Or as I eulogized at my father's funeral, "Nice Guys Finish With Class."
Leo Durocher, the cantankerous major league baseball manager, wrote a book "Nice Guys Finish Last."
I disdain to agree with that smart aleck philosophy.
If you're a nice guy you will end up with a plethora of friends and accomplices and you'll feel much more compassionate and you'll have a lot fewer enemies.
When I was incarcerated in the Washington County Detention Center for 107 days after being falsely accused of stealing a woman's purse at a tailgating event at The Gardens at the UofA, I made numerous friends in my pod.
I didn't change my persona.
While our pod was being repainted we had to temporarily move to another pod.
In the rush to relocate I found myself forlornly having to trudge upstairs with my mattress and blanket.
A very friendly black man grabbed my sleeping gear and rushed downstairs and told another fellow podmate that I was going to sleep downstairs on the bottom bunk.
That night while we were intensely reading the Bible I found a passage which fit that preceding scenario.
I can't remember the exact quotation, but it mentioned how we should pick up someone else's load and carry it for them.
I walked over and hugged the man and said, "I love you, brother."
That infectious beatitude and good will embrace took him by surprise. But he reciprocated and passed it on to another friend. I saw him go up and hug someone and say, "I love you brother."
Instead of holding grudges and chastising someone who's treated you with ill will, it's better to forgive and forget.
I've made friends, or at least, gained respect by apologizing when I let my emotions overcome me and say something I later regretted.
Once this year after standing in the hot sun awaiting entry to the community meal, a Katrina refugee who was transplanted up to Northwest Arkansas, hurriedly stampeded to the front of the line to get a meal ticket.
I frustratedly remarked, "Hey, dude, some of us have been standing outside in the hot sun and now you're barging in here and cutting in line."
He retorted: "I guess you've just been waiting to say that. Why don't you mind your own business?"
I felt guilty and apologized to him later.
He said, "Apology accepted."
Ever since then he's respected me.
I practice what I preach.
Nice Guys Finish With Class.