My reputation is one of the most important aspects about my
life. How people view me as a person and
how I conduct myself has always been extremely important to me. The best reputation that I know I have
obtained throughout my life so far is with all of my family. In my family, I am known as the nice
one. I am the person who will always be
very kind and understanding no matter what the circumstances are. These values were instilled in me by my
parents. My parents raised me to always
try to do the right thing no matter what I thought the outcome was going to be.
My immediate family obviously knows about the fact that I am
known as the nice one. Everybody in my
family is substantially ruder than I am.
As strange as this all sounds, it is very true. Every single member of my family would openly
admit that I am by far the nicest person in the family. This reputation of mine developed throughout
my life. I am not confrontational at
all, and I have a way of understanding and connecting with other people that
everybody around me seems to enjoy. My
family all say that I am very easy to talk to, and they have no problem coming
to me whenever they have any problems at all.
They know that I will try my best to create a great outcome for
them.
Keeping my reputation where it stands is not very difficult
to me. Being a kind and genuine person
really comes naturally to me. I rarely
will have moments when I get overly angry or upset, and when I do, I seem to be
able to control them very quickly and not have my problems spill over to other
people and create problems for them. In my
opinion, there are not many overall levels of being kind and genuine. Either it comes naturally to you or it does
not.
With my extended family, there are many similarities to how I
am viewed. They all know that I am
extremely kind and outgoing, but because they all know that I am a good person
to come to and talk, they do not necessarily do so. At first this bothered me because I am always
looking to help other people, but now I realize that it is a huge weight off of
my chest.
The biggest negative of having my reputation is that I feel
some inner obligation to take everybody problems and make them my own. My Mom and Dad have been telling me for years
that there will come a day where I need to become a lot more selfish and worry
about my own problems instead of trying to deal with everybody else’s problems. Going to college really helped me in this
category because I am not always around my family to help them out. I am busy here at school which makes me less
available to be dealing with everybody’s problems.
There are the few occasions where I stray away from the real
person that I am. It is extremely
difficult to really get under my skin, but when someone does, I can be
extremely rude and unfriendly towards them.
That sounds really bad, but there have realistically only been about
5-10 times in my life where I was really a bad person to someone. A situation where I have been rude to someone
for immediate personal gain is a situation in which I feel I am being
wronged. If I am at a restaurant and I feel
as though we are not being seated, or we are just not being served properly I will
stray away from my reputation to make the lives of the people I am with a lot
better. Although I do not like doing
this, and really do not like being confrontational, there are times in which I am
willing to put my foot down if I feel as though the people I am with and myself
are not being treated properly.
Overall, having the “nice guy” reputation is something I enjoy
because I value being a good guy more than almost anything in the world. Sometimes people think that means they can
push me over, but it has never come to that because people have always seemed
to respect me for who I am and the choices I make.
I was struck by your first paragraph. You started with being nice. You ended with doing the right thing. Are those one and the same? Or not? Does the answer depend on what others are doing? Is it different if the other person is in need of help versus if the other person has done something wrong and needs to be punished?
ReplyDeleteThen in your second paragraph you talked about not being rude and being easy to talk with. I agree that those are aspects of being nice. I wonder, however, whether it is the whole picture or if it something more. (I also wondered whether you are the middle child. I am a middle child and I do believe that fact impacts my personality.)
As to the rest of your essay, I wonder if you built the same sort of reputation at college or if, in contrast, the friendships you developed were with people who are like you so that being a nice guy was merely the norm for the entire group, whereas in your family it was not.
The issue about how nice people deal with others who are rude and then what triggers a tit for tat response or what instead encourages ignoring the rude behavior is something on which volumes could be written. My sense, however, is that when the trigger has occurred, it doesn't diminish the reputation that others have of you as being nice, unless they feel that it was no big deal and that you over reacted.
In any event, if being nice is part of your personality and something you do with no effort at all, then it is hard to imagine straying for that to cash in on the reputation, at least not directly. But it is possible that if others become more trusting of your as a consequence of being nice, that it sometimes puts you in a situation where you can take advantage without feeling it an act of betrayal. For example, if with your friends you are trying to figure out what to do on Friday night - go to the movies, listen to some live music, or simply hang out - on occasion you might be assertive about your own preference rather than go with the flow. I wonder if something like that ever happens to you.
I believe that being nice and doing the right thing can be very similar at times, but I would not consider them the same. Whether or not they are the same is completely dependent on the situation that you are in and the people that are involved in the situation.
ReplyDeleteI am actually the third child. I am the baby of my family. There are more factors to being nice than just not being rude and being easy to talk to. With that being said, those two aspects are huge components of being nice.
I would say that I have built the same reputation in college as I had built my whole life. Most of my friends are very good people and nice, but I would still say that everybody around me would still consider me the nice guy.
I agree with you that there are situations in which I can take advantage of things without even really noticing it. This happens a lot with my family because I am a person who asks for nothing. I really never want anybody to get me anything. So, when I do ask for something, I usually receive it because I rarely ask for anything.