Nice people shouldn't finish last?
On libraries, books, and places where nice doesn't mean finishing last
Is it strange that some nice people always finish last?
Hi, everyone-
Do you think humans are inherently nice? Or not so much?
When I was in kindergarten, I remember there was this boy who was pestering a much younger girl. For weeks, I watched this kid yank her hair, slap her papers, and pull her ears.
She’d whimper.
But she wouldn’t say a word. The one time she did try to tell the teachers something, they just blew her off. Mostly because:
She was a below-average student who usually turned in her homework late. So by merit, the teachers had already decided that she’s last in class.
Also, the boy was cunning. He knew. He’d always stop just before the teachers turn to them.
I could tell that whenever the day was nearing the end—the girl felt totally done. Finished. Her eyes were like thousand-year old trees. The stillness of the unmovable beatings … hardened her.
One day, the boy was feeling particularly powerful. I guess power makes tests of strength unnecessary. It turned pushing straight into shoving. Which he did to this girl.
Then: a loud crack.
She was on the ground—face down.
When she then looked up, it wasn’t the tired eyes that got me. It was the red oozing out of her temple. It was thick and dark, like molten lava that spewed out of a volcano and turned hard in seconds.
That’s it! I’ve just about had it! You worthless piece of … !
The next thing I knew, my fingernails were buried deep into the flesh of his cheeks.
No, that’s not good enough.
I wanted to make his skin and scalp feel everything that poor girl felt. It was much like digging my hands into mother’s tray of freshly baked molten chocolate cake. Relieving. Self-destructing. And guilty as hell.
But the teachers came. And, like an unfinished volcano still deciding between steaming and spewing, I had to be pulled away.
I overheard someone saying:
“What came over Thalia? Never seen her this way.”
That was the only fight I’ve ever got into in my entire life.
I thought the world values nice people. Nice people shouldn’t finish last. Had I not stepped in, that girl would’ve kept hardening until one lighting strike-punch from that boy would bring her tree down. Forever.
When I got older it didn’t seem like the world changed much.
The not-so-nice seems to keep winning.
They’d get the bigger house. They’d get the better pay. They’d get even better looking everything. And nice people I like and admire—just keep hurting.
It’s like watching the slow burn of a thousand-year old forest. It was no longer just the one tree that’s finished. It was now a whole mountain that’s covered in smoke.
I didn’t like that some nice people finished last.
But it did make me think.
And as any thought would, mine went to places I wasn’t necessarily ready to accept:
“Maybe I was wrong.”
If the ideal perception of finishing first is winning and becoming the type of person few like, then why would anyone even want to finish first in the name of such made-up ideals?
I realized that I had never bothered defining the meaning of three very important things:
The people that determines the meaning of “nice,”
The objective of the “finish”, and:
The time and place for finishing “first” or “last”.
To save you from a long explanation of my thumbing through stacks of books and scrolling through the depths of archival materials, here are the definitions that I’ve decided.
Of course, this might not work for you at all. But this is what I know works for my philosophy.
Meaning 1: Nice people are committed to the ridiculous
“Nice people” seem to have one quality that I admire:
They are so anchored in defending their commitment to what others consider ridiculous, that they’ve found peace in not needing to push and shove. Which is different from some who do push and shove: they’re drowning due to the uncommitted search for an anchor that wouldn’t make them look—ridiculous.
One example of this commitment to the ridiculous is L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. A collection of his work can be found in the Library of Congress.
Obviously, it could be that Baum had bad days when he wasn’t all that nice.
Frankly, who hadn’t?
And yet, Baum had largely been accepted as a father and husband who was willing to try every profession possible—including running a bazaar, starting a baseball club, news reporting, department store buyer, writing plays, and running a theater company—so that he could feed his family without abandoning his art.
Oh, and: he was willing to do the often frowned upon dirty work of … raising chickens.
Chickens!
Meaning 2: The real objective of the finish is to not finish
What I’ve decided on this subject is also singularly simple:
Finish lines are man-made measurements meant to be surpassed.
For this, I believe that the quality we’re looking for … is timelessness.
If I ask anyone who’s poured a significant amount of thought into this, the consensus tends to point to the author Erasmus, whose timeless work Codex Vaticanus from 1209 currently sits in the Vatican Library.
The little that is known of Erasmus was that he spent a lot of time in the forest.
The Black Forest, where there’s never any rush to finish first. Or to finish last. Or to finish anything, for that matter.
Odd, isn’t it?
The one guy whose work became first in many people’s minds, had actually set off to be … last.
With Erasmus in the Black Forest and L. Frank Baum in the field raising chickens, I’m beginning to think that:
Finishing first has everything to do with finishing last.
Or rather, the art of outlasting.
Meaning 3: The art of outlasting relieves the need to finish
JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings had already survived—and surpassed—many years of literature. Many of his work is now kept in one of the oldest libraries in the world: Oxford University’s Bodleian Libraries (yet another piece of art that outlasts years of human beatings).
Take a look at this conversation Tolkien had about world-building. Then notice the time Tolkien took before answering. Then compare to the time the interviewer took instead.
[0:48-0:57] Bowen (interviewer): Let’s then accept the fact that out of this stock [of ideas], you invent the world and this stock does include a stock of ideas about how worlds ought to be. No?
[3 seconds pause]
[1:00-1:06] Tolkien: No. Because I don’t believe that there is only one recipe at only one time.
[1 second pause]
[1:07-1:12 ] Bowen: You don’t yourself make out a recipe for personal behavior? You don’t believe you yourself ought to live in a certain sort of way?
3 seconds doesn’t seem like a long time. But try answering someone’s answer with a 3-5 seconds pause:
There is a visibly ridiculous commitment to be last to speak, to the detriment of the collective need to finish first. All in the name of outlasting any need to finish.
Perhaps, it isn’t that nice people shouldn’t finish last. It’s that they should outlast the first, the last, and the finish.”
-Thalia
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I appreciate you.
-Thalia
I feel this piece speaking directly to me. "Be successful" me has been trying to ride roughshod over "be who you are" me for most of my life, and it's time to put a stop to it. Taped to my desk, I have a quote from Thich Nhat Hanh: "The quality of our being is the basis of all our actions. With an attitude of accomplishing, judging, grasping, all of our actions--even our meditation--will have that quality. The quality of our presence is the most positive element that we can contribute to the world." I want to be about "the quality of my being." I going to try to play the long game.
Reading this I understand that I would be considered “nice”. I like complimenting people, supporting them, giving, I’m happy to wait in a queue, forgive the one who jumps in before me and stand back when someone is coming into a building before I exit. That’s a rule most don’t consider anymore. Thank you for this post.