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Politeness Greases Human Relationships

Politeness and courtesy are essential for healthy human relationships and personality development. While some think personality means dominating others, true personality involves being gentle, deferential and persuasive without making others feel small. Treating others with kindness, respect and consideration helps win people over rather than coerce them. Maintaining self-control over passions and keeping "a zoo of wild animals" caged in the back of the brain is important for a well-balanced personality. Politeness greases social interactions and makes life smooth, while rudeness may seem to get things done faster but damages relationships and harmony over time.

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Sharique Alam
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37 views2 pages

Politeness Greases Human Relationships

Politeness and courtesy are essential for healthy human relationships and personality development. While some think personality means dominating others, true personality involves being gentle, deferential and persuasive without making others feel small. Treating others with kindness, respect and consideration helps win people over rather than coerce them. Maintaining self-control over passions and keeping "a zoo of wild animals" caged in the back of the brain is important for a well-balanced personality. Politeness greases social interactions and makes life smooth, while rudeness may seem to get things done faster but damages relationships and harmony over time.

Uploaded by

Sharique Alam
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT

Politeness Greases Human Relationships


T
HERE is a mistaken impression as to the true meaning of personality. Many think that it is the power to impress or dominate other people. They think that it means the mastery of other people. A super-salesman walks into an office with the air of a conqueror. He has acquired a superiority complex, as we say. He acts as though he were a die and his prospect nothing but wax. He tries to stamp himself on the man whom he interviews. He tries to impose his will upon other people. He aims to overwhelm them with his selfconfidence and selling talk. This is all quite wrong. Whenever we think of a right definition of personality and selfconfidence, we think of Bruce Douglas, who was well-known in London for thirty years in the tea business. He was one of the gentlest of men self-effacing. He had an air of deference to small men, as well as to big men. He slipped into a room quietly, but in a short time he was directing the conversation. He influenced men by his intelligence, his reasonableness and his courtesy. He was the exact opposite of a super-salesman, but he knew how to sell goods and keep customers. Anyone who met him once wished to meet him again. How to be simple, likeable, deferential, and at the same time be persuasive and effective? People must be won over, not coerced and cornered. They must not be made to feel small. It is best to be gentle and considerate. The bossy manner is absurd. It destroys loyalty. The stronger a man is, the more careful he should be not to make other people afraid of him. In the real personality and self-confidence, there is no touch of arrogance or dictatorship. Basic problem is how to construct your own life according to your own purpose, without the wreckage of other lives. This requires, as Robert Louis Stevenson said, both fortitude and delicacy. It is easy to be strong and rough. It is easy to be weak and gentle. But it requires the highest degree of selfcontrol to possess both strength and gentleness. Why did Mahatma Gandhi become our national hero? Because he had courage without brutality. He never harmed a woman or an unarmed man. There was no cruelty in him. Even in a life of violence and danger, he kept his passions in control.
662 s FEBRUARY 2002 s THE COMPETITION MASTER

In every man, there is a fire of passions that must be kept in control by the crust of self-control and mental development. When a man attacks and ravishes and kills a young girl, what was the cause of it? A gorilla in the back of his brain broke loose. The man ceased to be human. He becomes a beast. When an agitator shoots and kills a judge, what was the cause of it? A tiger in the back of the brain broke loose. In the back of every brain there is a zoo. There are wild animals of passion and violence. And they must be kept in their cages. Every sane, well-balanced man is one who has put the front of his brain in control. His brain is both old and new, and he rules his life by the new part, not by the old. He uses his reason. He thinks. He keeps his Zoo in its place. Spinoza once wrote: The powerlessness of a man to govern and restrain his passions I call servitude. A man who is controlled by his baser feelings is not his own master, but is mastered by circumstances, under whose power he is often compelled, though he sees the better, to follow the worse. I was standing in a queue at a

PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT
cinema hall to buy a ticket when a heavy man (whose breath could start a distillery) bulldozed himself to the front. The well-fed looking policeman, with a danda in his hand, smiled and chose to amuse himself with the free entertainment. The heavy mans thick hand was thrust into the window and came out with crumpled tickets tucked into it. Everybody, including this scribe, heaved a sigh of relief. We awaited the staff reaction with breathless interest. We spineless junkies, who were expecting an explosion from the staff cabin, were disappointed. I had accompanied a Delhi journalist to a lunch at a popular rendezvous. We sat there for ten minutes without seeing the pate or the hide of a waiter. Ten minutes become twenty in such a situation but our manners forbade us to drum the table. Thus, we waited patiently. Then in marched a fire-eater. He threw himself in the chair adjoining ours and waited for about 50 seconds! Then, his dander was up. He rapped for attention. No waiter. He hammered the table with fingers and shouted Manager. A well-dressed man appeared. He bowed with a flourish. All, one could hear from him was a plethora of yeses and sorries. Lack of tact (the subtle discrimination of saying or doing a thing at the right moment) is missing in our day-to-day social contacts. In real life, one learns lessons. I have taught myself that it was polite to look interested when someone was addressing me, however dreary his story or stale his joke. No wonder, I have been martyred to good manners hundred of times and I do not know what else is in store for me. Shall I take my conduct as oldfashioned and be a convert to the tribe of those talk too much without saying anything? Or be interested in the Niagara of their words? Look disinterested? Or, like Goethe, stand up and leave the talker alone? Thats bad manners. True. But it saves you from a lot of drivel and suppressed yawns. What to do when a wind-bag insists on thrusting his verbosity on me? Or wants to have the last word? Interrupts when you talk or goes on repeating himselfinsulting your intelligence? On many occasions have I resisted the temptation of saying shut up. But I dont know how much longer I can hold myself back. I will hold on to my be-good-thing because the impression is gathering ground that rudeness pays. It gets things done; it gets you quick and service; it permits you to do many things which good manners forbid. Freedom is, thus, turned into liberty. Are jangled nerves and bad temper any substitute of a harmonious life? Will it not make life smooth and pleasant without bile? Politeness cannot be as taxing, and as hard and hurting. If there is anything we need badly today, in the rush and cut-throat competition of life, it is conduct which rounds off the roughness of character and chisels it into harmony. The choice is between curtness and courtesy; bad and good manners; and between politeness and insolence. Politeness consists in treating others just as you love to be treated yourself. It is kindness softly expressed. Discourtesy reveals a cluster of bad qualities like vanity, ignorance, indolence, stupidity, distraction of thought and contempt of others feelings. Courtesy is good sense combined with good naturea little self-denial for the sake of others, especially for those we live with. Marriage, for example, is a delicate and difficult relationship. It needs tact and patience. And loads of politeness. The wife needs it from the husband and vice-versa. The irate, tired wife does not need roughness. She needs gift of sweet word, wrapped in a ribbon of courtesy. That is why it is defined as benevolence in small things. The husband who takes a wee-bit of care of his wifes tea at a party, shows this in practice. Similarly, the husband who opens the door for her shows his courtesy. There are forms of politeness. One says: Look! How good I am. The other says: I will make You happy. Formalities are not courtesy which ought to be natural and unstudied as in the informality of two dear friends. It shows an amiable disposition in trifles. It is a desire to bring about in words and actions that by which we please others. In other words, it is a great greaser of harmony and happiness.

Current Affairs & Backgrounders


Comprehensive Notes on Current Affairs with Exhaustive Backgrounders

2002 Edition
(Revised & Updated)

KHANNA BROTHERS (PUBLISHERS)


126, Industrial AreaI, CHANDIGARH
663 s FEBRUARY 2002 s THE COMPETITION MASTER

Prestigious Publication of:

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