Sometimes it is really hard to do things right. I was in slow traffic and there was a car that was trying to pull out into it. I stopped the car crawl to let the car into the slow traffic. He pulled in. The car behind me started honking impatiently.

“I was just trying to be nice,” I said to no one in particular. I feel good when I can be nice to another person.

And then I began to wonder about the woman honking behind me. What was her story? What made her so impatient with my niceness?

Was she already 10 minutes late to the pediatrician? Had she been walking out the door to take her child to the doctor and he pooped his diaper? So, did she have to go back in and change him, making an already hectic day more stressful. And late?

Or maybe she is stressed because she just got a call from her 89 year old mother who had just fallen and could not get up.

I realized in thinking thusly that it isn’t always easy to be nice—especially to everyone all at one time. When we are nice to one person, we may be creating a minor inconvenience for another. Or we may be blocking the way for another to address a more significant crisis.

So, not sure that we can always be nice. Maybe the best we can do is be nice to the person in front of us and hope it doesn’t create too many problems for the one behind us.