The Cost of "Being Nice"

A Quiet Rebellion

I’m Canadian. We’ve built our entire reputation on being nice.

Saying “sorry” is woven into the fabric of our identity as a nation. It is who we are.

Apologizing can be a pain response when it’s done seemingly unnecessarily.

But if you asked me who was apologizing from pain and who was doing it because that’s just what we do around here, I couldn’t tell you.

“Sorry” is cultural as much as it is human.

We’re told to be nice from the time we’re very little.

How many times have you heard a parent, teacher, or caregiver say, “be nice” to a small child?

What does it mean?

It means: don’t hit, don’t throw things, don’t yell.

But there’s a consequence.

Telling a child to “be nice” when they’re angry or frustrated also teaches them not to be upset—or at least not to show it.

We don’t follow it up with a better way to deal with how they feel.

“Being nice” becomes the only way to be.

And in many ways, it actually means be fake.

Don’t be who you are, because I can’t handle you that way.

When you grow up in a culture built on “being nice,” a double-edged sword is always at your neck.

One side is the command from childhood; the other is the pressure to belong.

And as kids, we interpret that pressure in warped ways.

Some don’t care. Others, like me, try to survive by fitting in.

Maybe you know what I mean.

Maybe you’ve felt that way too—that quiet pressure to disappear in order to belong.

“Being nice” became my identity—even when it hurt.

Even when there was no reason to be.

To be nice, I had to stop defending myself when I was bullied.

To be nice, I had to blend into the woodwork—I had to be quiet, shy, rule-following. I had to conform.

But I never really fit in.

I followed the rules.

I dressed like everybody else.

I listened to the same music, talked the same way.

Still, I felt out of place.

Even now, walking through a mall or grocery store, I don’t feel like the people around me.

I never have.

I was taught to blend in, and yet I always felt like a blinking neon sign.

And I kept trying.

All fitting in ever meant was being fake.

I wasn’t being true to myself—I was sacrificing myself to “be nice.”

I became a square peg in a round hole.

I gave up my voice, my power, my soul—to become something I wasn’t.

Something I could never be.

It’s not that I wanted to hurt anyone or go around picking fights.

It’s that I didn’t want to make everybody comfortable.

I didn’t want to keep the peace.

I didn’t want to conform.

But I didn’t know what else to do.

I didn’t know I could give myself permission to exist as I was—even when the world told me I wasn’t good enough, worthy enough, or “nice” enough.

I learned insecurity and people-pleasing before I even learned how to add—because when I didn’t do those things, I wasn’t being “nice.”

I wasn’t conforming.

I wasn’t making people comfortable.

Jean-Paul Sartre talked about the idea of living in “bad faith”—of not being true to who we are.

It’s how we protect ourselves, but it comes at a cost—we lose the most valuable relationship we have: the relationship with ourselves.

I convinced myself that making others happy was my only job.

It led to a life of people-pleasing and quiet grief.

I was caught in a soul-sucking web of my own making.

And the worst part was: I didn’t know I could untangle the web and walk away.

It took me years to realize that truth—that being true to myself was the only way to find sustained joy.

And once I saw that truth, I had to ask another question:

What does sustained joy even look like for me?

I didn’t know.

I had never let myself pursue my goals.

My goals didn’t conform to what others wanted, so I let them go.

And in doing so—I let myself go.

I gave myself away to the world around me like a sacrificial lamb.

But I wasn’t a lamb.

I was just confused about how to exist in a world that never taught me I had a choice.

Imagine being in your late 40’s and learning—for the first time—how to make your own choices.

That’s what I did.

That’s what I did when I sat on the couch for months, terrified as I let all the balls I had been juggling out of fear drop.

I was going to let it burn, intentionally, to save myself.

We were evicted.

Bills weren’t paid.

Food was short.

Stress was high.

I held my ground and I waited.

Would it surprise you to know that not only did we land on our feet—we landed better off than where we started from?

The cycles had been shattered in an instant—broken by a very simple choice to stop fixing problems that I wasn’t creating.

I thought I had to fix the problems.

I believed they were mine because I lived in the house with the unpaid bills.

It had to be mine, right?

But it wasn’t.

Sometimes we just have to see that being in close proximity to a problem doesn’t make it ours to fix.

As much as you may love the people around you, their problems are not always yours.

It’s a hard lesson to learn.

Often, we learn it at the expense of our own well-being.

I thought I had to be the lamb.

But I wasn’t.

The truth is, I never was.

I just needed the right amount of pain to make changing it better than staying where I was.

Della