*not like my usual writing… perhaps a bit more raw and definitely a bit angry, also lacking in punctuation*
last night i had a dream that unsettled me deeply. there was a guy i used to date in it and he was so drunk that his eyes were rolling in the back of his head. and i went up to him and asked him what he was doing. it made me so angry i woke up just then at 1:30am in the morning. it really shook me. the dream was so dark and eerie that i got scared. i had to turn the light on above me which was ridiculously bright. i felt incredible anger towards him. i blamed my nightmare on his existence. i judged him. i judged him so fiercely. i woke up thinking what a loser he was for drinking so much, all the time. i judged, and judged, and got angry in my head. be nice, be nice, be nice. i kept repeating this, yet my mind continued to go to extremes and feed my anger more and more.
the anger continued on my commute to work. i hated it. commuting. i realized how much of my life i’ve wasted commuting. commuting is stupid. the guy at starbucks. i didn’t tip him. i always tip the guy at the coffee shop. be nice,be nice, be nice. his smile angered me though. i get to work. people are saying hi how are you, “i’m not great”, i say i’m fine but it’s easy to see on my face how i actually feel. i am angry at that guy from my nightmare for being a sloth in my dream. it repulsed me. i was so angry, with no where to put my anger. shall emotions need a place to be “put?”
i get behind the front desk. the first guy is this ultra nice dad. he is saying the people in the room above him kept him and his family up all night. he is going on about how unbelievable it is that anyone can possibly stay up the entire night. i asked him if he’d ever been them, and stayed up all night. not the right question for customer service, yeah i know. really not the right question. but i don’t know where it came from. he was nice though, so i gave him some money back and he was grateful. as that finished i write this now…
i asked the man in front of me to have some empathy for the people in the room upstairs. how could i – who is tearing apart an old flame (because of a DREAM) in my mind over and over again – tell this man that his feelings are wrong? how could i feel so high and mighty as to tell him to be compassionate? of course, this belief is at my core. to understand others and to put myself in their place whenever possible. but just saying that does not mean that i can always do that. be nice. be nice. be nice. but how, how could i possibly be nice in this moment? what if instead of telling myself to “be nice, be nice, be nice” i said “be curious, be curious, be curious.” maybe, then i could come from a place of authenticity. maybe then, i could come from an honest place.
because we all know. niceness is not always real. i feel the fake nice. i’ve seen the bullshit nice. the nice that is only nice to possibly get a return. i’ve been “that” nice before. many times. be nice, be nice, be nice doesn’t work for me anymore. curiosity, because maybe then, i’ll be able to dig deep and ask a question first. i’ll listen to why i don’t feel like being nice, because there’s a reason. i’ll listen to what is bothering me. i’ll listen to myself before i go out and take my anger out on people, or lie niceness to their face. i’m not saying don’t be nice and if you’re mad go hulk on the world (cough, dad), i’m just saying take a second. take a second to explore why that anger is there. don’t just cover it up with the niceness, because that is called repression.
a lot of times i played nice to feel safe. i was nice to get out of a hard confrontation. i “played” nice. i didn’t want to be nice. how many times have you seen emails signed kindly, or please, or happy whatever, when you know damn well that email did not come from a nice place. when you know it’s not real. “playing” nice is not real. playing nice is just suppressing what you feel inside. being nice is beautiful, but being nice all the time is not always truth. unless you’re buddha or a monk, if you live in this world i highly doubt you honestly feel good and nice all the time.
i’m off track though – judgment – all this begin because i saw someone else judge someone. or what i thought was judgment. instead of swallowing down niceness, i got curious. there right in front of me was my lesson for the judgment. by me calling the dad judgmental, i am expressing what is going on INSIDE of me. i only see this as judgment, because that is how i feel. he is not being judgmental. i only feel that he is judgmental, because i am feeling judgmental.
i tell this story to ask you what bothers you SO MUCH about people.
guess what? it bothers you because that is how you are. that is the only reason. you see in them what you see in yourself. i see it in every single person i know. in me, too of course. that’s why i try to shut up more than i used to. what you say bothers you is literally what you are. what you say about other people is how you see yourself. i swear it. also the reason i curse the guy in my nightmare’s existence is because i used to get very drunk and sloth like. i am judging him, because i used to be him. i hate his drunk because i hated my drunk. i hate him because i hated me. he is me.
so yeah, judgment. and nice. sometimes, the nice is not real. i guarantee you, curiosity is real though. because once you get curious about your negativities, and why you don’t feel like just being “nice” you’ll understand others too. look inward before you say anything about anyone. look, and you’ll see. this blog lacks any tie and ribbon on the top of it like most of my writing on my page, but this is written in honest emotion. it’s not “nice.” it’s real though. i didn’t even use proper capitalization. muahaha.