Mistletoe! and thoughts on niceness

This was from StanfordGirlProblems, but it's great. Made me smile so hard and feel all giddy inside.


On an unrelated note, two days ago C- asked N-, S-, and I what was one thing I valued. Her own answer was niceness, because it is underappreciated and taken for granted. My initial reaction was that it is not underappreciated because nobody dislikes nice people. But then I thought about it a bit more, and it made sense. When people are really smart, or have a great sense of humor, or something like that, such a thing is often verbalized in a compliment. It's definitely far rarer to hear "you're just really nice." Maybe it's because the opposing complement (not compliment) of niceness is being mean or rude, which if you are you're just a terrible person, and so it's expected that you're not that, and thus are nice. Exceptionally nice is not distinguished from nice. Meanwhile, if you don't have a great sense of humor, you're not any less of a good human being, and so it's not expected that people will have good humor.