The Myth of the ‘Nice Person’
Nice is a facade grown from habit while kindness is a genuine act
It was a late winter afternoon. I sat, back rigid and upright, on a half-moon-shaped waiting room couch. It was a little before dusk and work hours for some had just come to a close. I yawned as I stared into the changing skyline from the 22nd-story view. It was damp, cold, and hazy out. I glanced at my watch, then at the glossy display of magazines on the glass coffee table. I gleaned much cultural information from perusing these shallow magazines as I sat and waited my turn. It turns out, America is obsessed with happiness, I thought to myself, but is happiness a sustainable something to be had?
“ — Alia?” Her raspy voice interrupted the stream of conscious thoughts. I put the magazine down and walked toward her room.
Ruth was all of 4 feet, 10 inches. A diminutive, self-sufficient woman in her sixties of Ashkenazim descent. Modestly dressed, she wore knee-length pencil skirts of muted tones, Dr. Scholl’s loafers, and tan-colored pantyhose from a bygone era. She had chosen not to marry or have children of her own accord. A wise woman with a strange obsession: Ruth’s proclivity was to relate all things big and small to the events of September 11, 10 years after the fact. “It still feels like yesterday…” she would lament. Somehow…
