Nice vs. Kind

Kindness and niceness aren’t the same thing. This may sound like I’m splitting hairs, but once you notice the difference it’s hard to unsee. I first bumped into this idea through the New York stereotype—how people who don’t live here love to say New Yorkers are rude. I don’t buy it. New Yorkers just have a different concept of what counts as rude.

What I see most days is that New Yorkers are kind, just not especially nice. There’s a difference between a city full of “how are you today?” and a city full of people who will yank you out of a turning taxi’s path with a brusque “watch it.” One is smooth; the other is useful.

If I had to draw the line, niceness is the choreography—please and thank you, a smile, a little chat about the weather. It makes the social machinery run without friction, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but it can also be all superficial surface fluff. Kindness, on the other hand, is the motive force. It’s the part that actually cares whether you’re okay. Niceness can be a costume. Kindness can be a hassle. Niceness is charm that sometimes masks entitlement; kindness is a genuine concern for others.

In Practice #

In Manhattan, where you pass a thousand strangers before lunch, the politeness routine falls away because everyone’s in motion and the currency here is time. Blocking the sidewalk, five-abreast at a museum pace—that’s peak disrespect. Cutting through the small talk so the line at Duane Reade moves? That’s a kind of respect, too. Sometimes you give up your subway seat to someone who needs it, but you don’t need to exchange words or even smile.

There’s also the “nice guy” stereotype—politeness with a price tag. It’s not kindness; it’s a tactic. Niceness expects a return. Kindness doesn’t invoice. If a friend asks to borrow money, it’s nice to float the loan and expect it back; it’s kind to help without turning the relationship into a ledger. Kindness given freely beats niceness on credit. You can’t use niceness as a form of payment to get things you want from people.

To be clear, I think the nice guy stereotype itself has been beaten into caricature by the gender wars. I’m not trying to pile onto that. You can certainly be a genuinely nice guy (or gal for that matter) and that’s not a bad thing. Sometimes nice is actually just nice, and that’s fine.

And What About You? #

I’ve been doing a quiet self-audit on this front. Where am I actually helpful, and where am I just doing what makes me feel like a good person? I love to sit with a book in the little garden near my place—dogs at my feet, the same volunteers tending the garden beds and picking up trash, the same regulars passing through.

Being kind (at least for me) requires overcoming my own insecurities and anxieties. Being kind is hard—it requires exiting my comfort zone and risking rejection (not everyone wants to be helped).

Sometimes at the garden, I nod and keep to myself. Other days I remember what it felt like to be the invisible person and I try to be the opposite—ask how someone’s doing, offer a hand, put a stray compliment to work (“that jacket looks great on you”).

Sometimes I make mistakes, too—doing things that aren’t kind, and are, in fact, mean. The jokes I toss off without thinking, the small ways I might make somebody’s day worse instead of better—I’m trying to notice those and cut them off before they land. Step one, really, is subtracting harm. Becoming aware of the moments when I say or do something without adequately considering about how it might affect others is a skill that needs to be developed.

Quid Pro Quo or Quid Pro No? #

Part of what helps is not treating kindness like a transaction with a scoreboard. If I’m kind so that you’ll like me, I’m already off the mark. The old Stoic line is as sharp as ever: some things are in my control—what I do, what I say—and some things aren’t—what you think of me, whether you say thanks. I can control the gesture, not the reaction¹. And the Bhagavad Gita puts it in a single sentence I wish I’d absorbed years ago: I have a right to my actions, not to the fruits of them². Do the work; let the outcome go.

Call it non-attachment if you like—the practice of showing up without clinging to how it turns out. Psychologists who study non-attachment describe it as a flexible way of relating to experience without grasping or suppression, and they’ve found it’s linked to healthier psychological and social functioning³. That tracks: when I’m not busy worrying about the return on investment (ROI) of my “good deed,” I usually do a better deed entirely.

Here’s the funny thing: the evidence suggests that kindness works better than we expect, even when no one applauds. A meta-analysis of twenty-seven experiments—more than four thousand people—found that doing kind acts gives a reliable, small-to-medium lift to the giver’s well-being⁴.

It’s not complicated stuff, either; start small with doable things. In another study, people with significant anxiety or depression were randomly assigned to different practices; the group doing small, regular acts of kindness wound up feeling more socially connected (and generally better) than groups practicing some standard cognitive-behavioral tools⁵. That one result alone has been a nudge for me to stop overthinking and just help.

We’re poor judges of impact, which perhaps stems from a certain pessimism or negative bias. In a series of field and lab studies—buying a stranger hot chocolate in a park, small gifts in controlled settings—givers consistently underestimated how much the gesture would matter. Recipients felt warmer and happier than the giver predicted⁶. So yes: if they don’t say thank you, the kindness still counts, and it probably landed harder than you think.

Pay It Forward #

There’s also a spillover effect that makes me a little optimistic about people and how far a little kindness can go. Cooperative behavior has been shown to ripple through social networks—sometimes out to “three degrees” of separation—so your generosity to me today can show up later in how I treat somebody you’ll never meet⁷. No scoreboard, no strings—just the thing that helps, and then keeps helping.

If kindness is the positive project, the baseline is simpler: first, do no harm. Ahimsa, the principle of non-violence, is broader than not hitting people; it’s a refusal to injure when you can avoid it—including with your mouth, your actions, your timing, your tweets. It’s a decent way to move through a city: less needless snark, less sidewalk sabotage, less weaponizing of other people’s time. First, do no harm—ahimsa as everyday etiquette⁸. It begins with yourself and extends outward. In other words, give yourself a break.

Be Kind, Be Nice #

All of which loops me back to New York and the original distinction. The world is not suffering from a shortage of “nice.” TV anchors are nice. Customer-service scripts are nice. Being mean is easy. Being nice is easier. Being kind, repeatedly and without a scoreboard, is the hard and worthwhile thing.

I’m not claiming to be good at it. I’m saying I want to be the person who notices, who offers, who helps, and then moves on without waiting for the receipt to print. Kindness is less about polishing the interaction and more about relieving a burden. If I can do that a little more often—on the subway, in the garden, in the line at CVS—I’ll take it as progress.