We spend the better part of our lives trying to make sense of ourselves, yet most people will go through life without ever asking the simplest questions. Who am I when no one is watching? Why do I act the way I do? Is my kindness rooted in principle, fear, hunger for recognition or thirst for approval? Is what I have become a conscious choice or merely the sum total of what I have been conditioned to be?
Socrates warned that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” Orwell added, more bitterly perhaps, that “to see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” Both men were notorious for saying things that ought to be obvious. Both understood that truth, in its raw form. Both rarely flatters. That is precisely why it is so often ignored.
The world, for the most part, prefers people to be agreeable. Polite. Innocuous. It rewards performance over sincerity and decorum over clarity. And so, we learn early to be what is expected. We become adept at echoing what sounds aligning. We conform not because we are free, but because we are frightened of the consequences of freedom. *Niceness, in this context, is just well-dressed fear.*
From the moment we are born, we are handed scripts. You are this. You are not that. You will do this. You must not ask that. Our first task is to obey, and most people never outgrow the comfort that conformance offers. They become experts in adaptation, fluent in the language of social expectation. They speak the “truths” that make no one uncomfortable, nod when they ought to challenge, laugh when they wish to protest. They are what they have been. A product of approval. Their lives are tidy. They offend no one. They mean nothing.
But some people, either by accident or by necessity, enter the inescapable condition of becoming. Something cracks. Something doesn’t fit. The roles that once felt secure begin to chafe. The lies they have told themselves grow heavier. They begin to see. And what they see is unsettling.
This is where the real struggle begins. It is not merely a struggle with society, though that is part of it. It is, more profoundly, a struggle with oneself. With the ease of self-deceit. With the temptation to remain unchanged, with the pull of the past. *Being is hard. Becoming is harder. Because becoming means rejecting what you have been when what you have been still socially useful.*
Niceness thrives in the land of been. It is passive. It asks no questions. It maintains peace by avoiding the *truth*. It smiles while injustice flourishes and calls it “not the right time to speak.” Niceness apologises for existing too loudly. It prefers silence to tension. It prefers being liked to being real. It prefers being aligned to being just.
Kindness is something altogether different. Kindness is not softness. It is not pleasant. It does not flatter. Kindness costs something. It is principled, not eye service. It tells the truth when silence would be safer. It challenges when it would be easier to comply. A kind person may speak sharply, may break ranks, may walk alone. Because kindness demands not comfort, but conscience.
It is easier to be nice than to be kind because niceness asks nothing of you. It does not challenge your assumptions. It does not examine your habits. It does not look in the mirror. But kindness, like becoming, requires the unblinking self-awareness that Socrates called a life worth living. It requires the ability to see what Orwell warned we are conditioned to ignore: what is directly in front of our nose, what we pretend not to see because the truth would upend our convenience.
Look around. In associations, we reward the agreeable. In groups, we prefer for the familiar. In our interactions, we exalt the ceremonial over the ethical. In relating with others, we often choose silence over honesty. We are taught to preserve appearances, even if it kills the substance underneath. And we tell ourselves we are being mature, strategic, or polite.
But no society can endure indefinitely on niceness. Because niceness, untethered from truth, corrodes the soul. It is kind people, not nice ones, who carry societies through rejuvenation. Who bear the weight of saying what others avoid. Who act when others hide. Who see what is in front of them and refuse to look away.
The process of becoming is not linear. Most people enter and exit it several times over a lifetime. Sometimes we regress. We go back to what we know. We pretend to be what we used to be, for a while. But the discomfort grows. The inner tension accumulates. And one day, usually in a moment that feels like collapse, we choose again. To step away from performance. To risk discomfort. To examine. To act.
This is not easy. It will cost you relationships. It will make you enemies. You will be called names, or disloyal, or arrogant. You will be accused, charged, tried and “found” guilty as charged. You may lose an association, a reputation, a recognition, an accolade, an applause, accessibility or the approval of those who conditioned you never to offend. But what you gain, if you persist, is the thing most people never find: honesty!
This clarity is not the same as certainty. Orwell was skeptical of too much certainty, particularly when it came in the form of ideology or unquestioned loyalty. He believed in the uncomfortable truths, in contradiction, in nuance. But he also believed that there are moments when you must choose a side. That *neutrality, in the face of cruelty, is a form of cowardice*. That language must be plain, and courage must be practical.
To become someone who acts with kindness instead of niceness is to reject neutrality where neutrality props up harm. It is to stop performing the part you were handed and begin living the life you have examined. It is to see the invisible scaffolding of raw and untamed power, and refuse to hold on to it.
It is easier to talk about freedom than to live it. Living it means relinquishing the perks of conformity. It means becoming someone who does not fit. And yet, history belongs to those who became.
Nelson Mandela spent twenty-seven years becoming. Malcolm X became and became again. Frantz Fanon, Che Guevara, and Imam Khomeini each burned the bridges of their former selves to walk into something closer to ideal. Not perfection, but conviction.
Their lives are studied not because they were agreeable, but because they examined, they struggled, and they acted. They offended, they opposed, and they persisted. And in doing so, they forced the world to reckon with what it preferred not to see.
Their message, stripped of ideology, was simple: do not confuse peace with justice, nor performance with principle.
The same applies in personal life. Do not confuse silence with virtue. Do not confuse approval with integrity. Do not confuse being liked with being honest.
Ask yourself: have I examined the life I’m living, or merely survived it? Am I being kind or merely nice? Am I becoming or just repeating what I have always been?
We must choose, again and again. The pressure to conform never disappears. The easier path never ceases to whisper. But the examined life calls louder.
It asks you to notice. To name. To act.
It is never too late to stop being what others expected. To start becoming what truth requires.
It is not a comfortable life. But it is a real one. And in a time when illusion is mass-produced, a real life is revolutionary.
*Qulil lah! Thumma zhar hum fiy khadhihim yal abuun.*
