Be Nice

I'm a people pleaser. I want people to like me, so I don't make ripples, I bend over backwards, smile when inside I'm seething - well, you know how it goes. There are a lot of us out there.

When I first started my job here, one of my duties was student admission (it's now that full-time, with other stuff added). Being the "nice" person who I was, I found it really really hard to dash a prospective student's hopes and dreams by telling them they didn't qualify to study here. I almost wanted to slip them through under the radar, even though many of them had grades that said it was NOT a good idea for them to attempt any type of study. I remember one lady who turned up at registration with no money for fees. I went and paid her quarter's fees, with the promise from her that I'd have the money back in a week. Of course I was pretty naive - it took 6 months for me to get the money and made me bitter and angry in the process.

I'm nearly over that kind of behaviour with regards to students - but still, like today, find myself in the position of having to dash a few dreams and turn them away. It's still hard. I know what it's like to be disappointed, when there's nothing you can do about it.

Work isn't the only place I try to "play nice". I've taken crap without a word for many years from many people because I wanted to appear nice, be liked. It is, after all, "Christian" to love your enemies, turn the other cheek, do good to those who don't do good to you. That's been hammered into many of us so hard that it's a part of who we are now.

But there's another part that doesn't want to be nice. That wants to instead be real and quit the act. The part that knows Christianity is going to get a bad name if it comes out. That part is battling right now to poke out its head, show its ugly face to the world.

I don't want to give God, Christianity, a bad reputation through my one example. I may just carry on putting up the walls and painting on the happy face instead of throwing my toys out the cot. But it gets really tiring, this act. Maybe a good tantrum every so often would be cathartic...? Bring me off whatever pedestal I imagine myself to be on? Let me discover the REAL me that's hiding behind being nice? Would I really want to know that me?

As staff members here we're constantly reminded that we're a Christian, no - a Seventh-day Adventist - institution, and we need to act like it. Act? I'd rather not (one more reason I'm not fitting in so well). It's no good putting on a big show of sticking to what we're supposed to be, ignoring the stuff swirling just below the surface. All the arguments over how we appear are moot, just for show - or at least that's my opinion. We might better show what God's all about if we were just ourselves, warts and all. When change comes in our lives, real change, it's likely to inspire a lot more than the show we've put on for years.

I don't think I really want to be nice today, to play nice. But I'm torn between my "Christian duty" and my dragging-my-feet-through-the-desert journey. Don't know if either of them will win this battle.

I guess it's called being lukewarm.