In Praise of Being Nice

At school we were told to avoid nice. Nice is a lazy word. Nice is unimaginative and uninteresting. Nice is boring. There is a whole plethora of better adjectives waiting to be plucked from the linguistic fruit bowl, why chose the first that comes to mind? At the front of my classroom, as in many, there was a large poster emblazoned with the legend “Never Use Nice!” with a list of more savoury suggestions below just to discourage kids from ever using that filthy word again.
But all this primary school vocab bullying doesn’t seem to have done much good for any of us. We still seem to pick nice to describe just about anything. We go on holiday somewhere nice every once in a while, and if we’re lucky, stay in a really nice hotel with a nice view. Perhaps meet a nice couple who live in a nice cottage a few miles south of Somewhereshire (which is very nice this time of year I hear). All very nice. Is our vocabulary so stinted that we have to resort to recycling the same adjective over and over? Or are we perhaps in fear we’ll run out of words altogether?
Sometimes however, nice is needed. People may think nice is wishy-washy, but to me it’s meaning is very specific. Nice is friendly, nice is unpretentious, nice is humble and unassuming, nice is childishly innocent, it certainly won’t change the world but nice is - when it comes to it, just plain nice. And that’ll do nicely.
People trample all over the good name of nice everyday. Gordon Ramsey, Jeremy Clarkson, Sir Alan Sugar, and Simon Cowell to name a few who grumble and snigger their way onto our televisions every week. All these people for one reason or another have lost the ability to be nice along the way.
Anyone who’s made a name for themselves shouting at, intimidating and belittling others, posturing and being self-indulgent, self-loving and downright selfish should take some time out to consider just being nice.
But all this complaining sort of defeats the object of what I was saying in the first place, so I’ll keep quiet. But hopefully someone reading this article will have dropped the magazine in shock, knocking their skinny latte over their be-suited knees in the process, then swiftly dialled up Margaret from the office to apologise for shouting at her earlier on.
Or maybe someone will take a deep breath before moaning to the waiter that his or her food hasn’t come yet, or to the girl behind the till that they can’t get a refund on their latest purchase; it is after all not their fault. Probably not. But of all the things I can’t stress enough, please: if you can’t think of anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.