'You're Very Tolerant.' Thanks, It's A Character Flaw
On being too nice, the rules of social etiquette, and when to tell people to stfu
Recently I had a strange encounter with an elderly man. It started, as it often does, with a slight nod of acknowledgement recognising each other’s presence in the space. I was sitting on a bench taking in the view and then suddenly:
“It’s a nice day out.”
“Yeah, it’s what’s to be expected in January.”
And then you are trapped. There is no way out, tunnel vision sets in. Where are my escape routes? Can I jump off the hill?
At the end of what I estimated to be a 15-20 minute politically charged one-way conversation, the man handed me a slip of paper with his name and contact information printed (should I have wished to continue the interaction) and a very matter-of-fact statement: “You’re very tolerant. You just sat there and listened very intently to my rant.”
It’s a fun story to share afterwards, all the controversial and popular opinions on the state of the world, but it’s 20 minutes of my life I’ll never get back and a conversation I never wanted to be a part of in the first place.
I am very tolerant. Perhaps too tolerant. I think it’s part of what makes me me. I’ve always equated it with being nice and showing good social etiquette. I don’t push forward in crowds or to the bar because I’d expect the same behaviour from others. Realistically, I know this is not how the world actually works, which is why I end up in situations where middle-aged men at the bar loudly comment on my generation’s lack of pushiness (or perhaps young women more specifically) or at the end of my friend’s extended arm being pulled through a sea of people.
It’s not a lack of pushiness. It’s the fear of being rude and unfair. Quite often my tolerance is regarding things that don’t really matter. That’s why I tolerate it. I’ll get to order at the bar eventually, there’s no rush. Occasionally, I end up in awkward situations where my ear is being talked off by a stranger who saw an opportunity to speak their mind because I didn’t stop them.
In that particular scenario, I had few options to escape but all seemed like overreactions, I felt safer to just ride this one out. And that’s the other thing. Sometimes the situation can feel uncertain – I don’t know these people or how they will react if I tell them to shut up and leave me alone. The image I give the world is of a young, white woman, three apples tall, childishly red-cheeked and innocent. I don’t pack a punch and it shows.
I am somewhat okay with that. My experience with the world is that because I look like a nice girl I have to act like one too. The problem is I want to be a nice person and this is where my niceness is abused.
A few years ago a friend of mine was going through a tough period of doubts filled with erratic and unpredictable behaviour. Things slowly got worse and became unhealthy, depressive episodes that affected everyone around her. People closest to her, including me, worried about her wellbeing and I remember turning to someone unrelated to the situation for advice. I didn’t know what to do other than to offer myself and my time to my friend in need.
But that didn’t help and the point came where she refused professional help. This is where I should have removed myself from the situation, there was nothing more that I could do, but for months I tolerated the mess, the guilt-tripping, the manic voice notes and messages, and the discomfort in my own flat. My tolerance was mistaken for care and I felt like a child’s blanket squeezed tight in the moments she realised she needed to squeeze something. I didn’t know how to get myself away from her. There was sympathy between the squeezes and it wasn’t until she moved away that I became intolerant.
This has now become a (somewhat) fun and traumatic story of someone else’s shitty behaviour and how I put up with it for nearly a year because there was no escape. Sometimes people respond with their hypothetical reaction if they had been in my situation. I welcome it, it offers good perspectives and perhaps advice on how I can toughen up a bit. But it makes me wonder if I’m being too nice, too tolerant, or if they are too intolerant. How much tolerance should we show? How much should I tolerate?
It obviously comes down to personal values. As a whole, I do think that society has become more tolerant toward the things that don’t align with every belief and value we hold. Tolerance is a massive part of allowing peaceful coexistence in communities where people loudly agree to disagree. A study in the UK looked into the changing attitudes of different generations towards minorities, such as racial groups and queerness, and it showed that younger cohorts are generally more tolerant than their parents and grandparents. That’s good, right? More of that!
However, too much tolerance breeds intolerant behaviour. There is a Paradox of Tolerance, described by a philosopher named Karl Popper back in the 1940s (yes, in an effort to make sense of something horrendous that happened during the 1940s). The paradox goes like this: if tolerant people tolerate ideas and behaviours that are intolerable, what is left in the end is a society of intolerance. We therefore need intolerance to remain tolerant.
It’s a balancing game accepting differences and calling out injustices. But the excessive tolerance that I show, the ‘survival’ tolerance which I find necessary to get through awkward and uncomfortable situations is at best harmful to me, at worst harmful to others.
When the old man proclaimed that I was very tolerant as he had stood there and told me that Trump is bad and Putin is our friend, he did it with some happiness and relief. He said that sometimes he didn’t know if he’d get in a fight with other people over his opinions. Shocked, I said that I would obviously not fight anyone just because I might be in disagreement with them. In that instance, I would argue that people could possibly show a little more tolerance.
I don’t think my tolerance should be celebrated. Granted, it does work in my favour at times, but it being pointed out to me so poignantly in a situation where I had compromised my wants and needs made it obvious that it is not a virtuous characteristic.
Now, can I change this? I fear it is quite a solidified piece of my personality. Do I start telling people to shut up? Should I just physically remove myself from every awkward encounter? Advice is welcome.