I always felt that nice people truly did suck. Not because of the presumption that people would walk all over you, per se, but more likely because being intrinsically nice made you the perpetual odd guy out, like having a third nipple or a penchant for bringing liver and onions to elementary school for lunch. From others, niceness was treated as an curable disease, a force of being to eventually outgrow, like a tendency to chew your nails or to wake up early for Saturday morning cartoons. Yes, niceness was a characterstic to be gazed down upon with unwelcoming eyes. By teen years, "nice" had become a category all its own: he wasn't ugly, stupid, plain or simply "not the guy for me," he was "nice." But these people all had nice pegged wrong. Nice people, if you think about it, actually rock. It's the root of niceness that really sucks. For at the root of nice are the pillars of inopportune, unwarranted and oft-threatening behaviours: the good intentions.

Let me introduce myself. I am the king of good intentions. Unfortunately, for the rest of humanity, I may just also be the world's biggest arbiter of bad execution. When "it made more sense to me in my head" and "I thought I was doing something good" become synonymous with "I'm sorry," and on a near daily basis, you know you've got a problem. Except I didn't know I had a problem. To me, trying to keep everyone and everything around me harmonious and happy and peaceful was a natural goal. Who wouldn't want to keep drama to a minimum? As it turns out, alot of people. Because those good intentions can easily become interferences, which easily become "who the fuck do you think you are?" and "why don't you mind your business?"

He was going to break her heart. I knew that he was. Everyone who came within a five-foot radius of my friend Emily and her new beau Rob senior year could tell that her investment in him was on a one-way road to Tearsville. Yet, no one said anything. "Well," I said to them, "Maybe that's the kind of friends you are, but I can't just sit here and watch her get hurt."

"Stay out of it," they urged.
"B-B-But we can't just sit here!" The mere idea of it, how appalling.
"Of course we can. It's her life."

I stared at them with wide, confused eyes. I couldn't comprehend allowing someone to get hurt when you have the opportunity to intervene.

So, naturally, I intervened.

"He's going to hurt you."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"Just be careful, is all I'm saying. I care about you."

No, this isn't a TV sitcom. She didn't yell at me and call me jealous or a spoiled brat. She didn't stomp out and slam any doors. But when I approached Rob and asked him politely to "lay off leading her on" she came over my house and I opened the front door to be greeted by eyes so red I thought I'd combust right then and there.

"You can't be everyone's mama." A friend scolded me at a bar years later after I'd told our mutual friend to stop flirting with other guys in front of another friend of ours who had a not-so-secret crush on him and was looking visibly upset. "By getting involved, you are introducing yourself to their drama. Let them soak in their own shit."

Again, appalled. "What are you talking about?" I begged, "You mean just sit around and watch him make sad faces and be all upset 'cause Jay is flirting with other guys?"
"Yes. It's not like they're dating. And it's between them, you aren't involved."
"I guess," I conceded, "But I want everyone to be happy."
"Uh huh, and I'd like to win the lottery. What's your point?"

"You're so judgmental!" I was recently scolded. "Who told you to even get involved and pass a judgment on the situation!?"
"Well, no one I-I-I was just trying to help." And I was in this case of a virtual repeat of Emily and Rob, except the gay version.
"No, you were interfering."
"I didn't want you to get hurt."
"Who asked you to be that person for me?"
"W-well, no one..."
"So what the fuck!?"

Yes, so what the fuck?
"You know," a friend recently counselled, "if you put as much effort into keeping yourself happy as you did in making sure everyone around you was happy, you'd be in a much better place."
"What do you mean?"
"You can't be everyone's momma."
"I've heard that before." I sighed, feeling suddenly overwhelmed and ashamed.
"Look," he put his left hand on my shoulder, "You're a good person. And these days, finding even one good person is like, amazing. I mean, you care about people. That's like....foreign. But you're so full of good intentions. You can't be everyone's band-aid."
"I guess..."
"Look, just how many of these people do you think would do the same for you? They see you upset and turn their heads, why not you do the same?"
"That sounds so jaded though." I said, tryng to erase the despondency from my face.
"Besides," he added, his smile coercing an equal reaction from me, "When you get involved in other peoples' shit, you become part of that shit. And who wants to be shit?"

Which brings to the table a good point of how nice people tend to think of others before they think of themselves. So perhaps the adage is incorrect? The road to hell isn't really paved with good intentions, but instead with misappropriated ones. There's nothing wrong with being nice, but what if that's all that you bring to the table? What if, by being nice, you are constantly over-extending yourself? Constantly adopting other peoples' issues, pain and drama? Constantly inserting yourself into conflicts that otherwise don't involve you. The road to hell is paved with people who cannot differentiate between being nice and being a chump.

So when another self-destructive friend recently expressed dissatisfaction with an aspect of his life, I did something I haven't done in a very long time: nothing. I listened. No commenting. No advice. No judgment calls. No getting in between him and said problem. Does this mean I've finally been embittered? Jaded? Destroyed? Made callous? I don't know.

But it makes life a hell of a lot easier.