Around a table, with family or at work, labels are quickly thrown around: there would be the “nice”, the “painful”, the “brilliant” and the “sucky”. We say “X is annoying, he only talks about himself; Y is really very friendly, she creates a good atmosphere”, then we move on to something else. This way of classifying others is reassuring, because it simplifies relationships. But it also locks everyone into a role. The philosopher Gustave Thibon summed it up this way: “We stick labels on men not to recognize them but to avoid looking at them.”
In a column published by Psychologies magazine, psychiatrist Christophe André, co-author of The New Fear of Othersalso questions what it really means to be “nice“. He recalls that the word “sympathy” comes from Greek and means “to feel-with”. In other words, it is a set of small attitudes which make someone, in the words of the philosopher André Comte-Sponville, “easy to live with, to understand, to love”.
Distinguish the “nice” from the “painful”
Christophe André recalls that kindness is sometimes mocked, while sympathy is always perceived positively. However, we find a person likeable because they are above all kind, sociable, pleasant: these are the bases which earn them the label “nice”. Then come the “options” that reinforce this feeling, such as humor, a certain kindness, or the art of restarting and nourishing the conversation without monopolizing it.
These qualities relate to what the ancients called “common virtues”: cordiality, affability, tact, delicacy, etc. When they are there, the relationship remains fluid. When they are missing, we quickly fall into the register of the “painful”: sensitiveness on edge, constant demands, conversations focused on oneself. The same person can then be perceived as charming one day, exhausting the next.
The real “nice ones” are those who “liberate” us
For André Comte-Sponville, cited by Christophe André, these people are characterized above all by an inner simplicity: they are easy to live with, to understand and to love, without the need for exclusivity or possessiveness. We know where we stand with them, the rules of the relationship are clear, there are no hidden traps.
Albert Camus wrote in 1957, in a letter to the poet René Char: “The older I get, the more I find that you can only live with beings who liberate you, and who love you with an affection that is as light to bear as it is strong to feel..” This sentence well sums up the criterion of “nice people” for Christophe André: they do us good while respecting our freedom.
The right question to ask yourself
From this perspective, everyone can observe themselves: do you let the other person speak, do you listen without judging, do you complicate everything or do you make the encounter light to bear?