11d • Perspective & Meaning
Just be nice. It works
Kindness can help people. But it can also be used badly. I worked with someone who used to film herself handing out Greggs pasties to homeless people for social media. She couldn’t see the problem. That people still have dignity. That turning someone’s worst moment into content isn’t kindness. It’s using them. Its shittiest of the shitty.
When I was in a two year depression, I barely moved off the settee. People would say things like “pull yourself together” or “just think positive” like it was a switch you could flip. It just made things worse.
What hit harder was the silence. Friends I’d known since I was four. People I’d gone to war with on a rugby pitch. No one came. Not one.
Except one. A lad from Jujitsu. We’d got close over lockdown, a lot of laughs, a lot of stupid nights. On the mats he’s relentless. Tough. Loves taking the piss when he taps you. Not the kind of person you’d expect to just sit quietly with someone falling apart.
But he showed up. Didn’t try to fix anything. Didn’t tell me what to do. Just sat there and listened to me talk absolute nonsense for hours. Didn’t judge it. Didn’t rush it. Just stayed. He had a young baby at the time as well. Still made the effort.
That stuck with me more than anything. Not advice. Not solutions. Just someone showing up when it counted.
It made me rethink who actually matters. There’s a line in Derek where someone says “kindness is magic.” It sounds soft, but there’s something in it. Not because the world rewards you for being kind. It doesn’t. Good people get shafted all the time and plenty of arseholes do just fine. But kindness changes something in you.
It pulls you out of your own head for a bit. Reminds you there are other people out there dealing with their own mess. It keeps you grounded.
Same with integrity. It’s just doing the right thing when there’s no upside. No audience. No credit. No one watching. Not because you’re trying to be a good person. Just because you don’t want to turn into someone you don’t recognise. When everything else is unstable, that stuff holds.
Your job might go. Relationships fall apart. Your head goes to some dark places. But if you’ve still got your word, your standards, how you treat people… that doesn’t move.
That becomes something solid to stand on. You don’t need to make a show of it. Do something decent for someone and don’t tell anyone about it, no post, no credit. Just leave it there. Same with honesty, Same with how you carry yourself, Most people won’t notice but you have banked it.
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Just be nice. It works
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