Be kind, not nice.

It's been a hot minute. And by minute, I mean months.

But I'm back(ish). In all honesty, I'm rebuilding. From the instability, the chaos, the "wtf-is-this-real-life" moments, and the betrayals (not to be dramatic or anything).

Three months ago, I moved back to NYC and saw a side of the city I'd never seen before (to be fair, I'd only lived here barely a year the first time). I'd been too naive. This time was wildly different, and a lot uglier than I expected. 

The idealism was tarnished; I always imagined the city as the epitome of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The epicenter for the dreamers, doers, and builders. The reality was vastly different; I witnessed the degradation of history, the overt disrespect for legacy, and the loss of basic decency and decorum (I would love to be proved wrong). That's what shocked and upset me most, now that I think about it. Incredulous, really.

Somehow, at the same time, it was still everything I remembered and knew to be true. The hustle. The history. The beauty. It's one of the great cosmopolitan cities of the world, but the real beauty, to me, is in the hidden gems. The things that show how the city was built, how it's evolved, how it keeps rebuilding itself. They're in the little things, what I like to call the character of the city.

That's what I saw and lived these past few months.

I always thought NYC was a cold, soul-less city. It turns out to be one of the kindest. Just definitely not a nice one.

There's a saying in tech, plastered on the walls of every other company like a values poster nobody reads twice: no assholes allowed. I used to agree completely. Nobody likes working with arrogant, self-centered people. But that was never the real problem.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not an advocate for greed, vulgarity, or a total absence of manners. But there is real value in people who are direct, who don't sugarcoat, who tell it like it is at the expense of a few hurt feelings. We can't all sit in a circle, hold hands, and sing kum-ba-ya. There isn't time. 

The faster the truth is out, the faster everyone can figure out what to do with it, move forward, or part ways. That's the kind thing to do. It might feel mean in the moment, but it serves everyone better in the long run.

So the problem was never the direct people. The problem is the insecure ones.

Here's the real rule, in my humble opinion. The saying should be: no insecure people allowed.

This doesn't mean we all have to be loud and obnoxious. Quite the opposite. Some of the quietest people are the most secure, the ones who feel no need to prove anything or show off. It doesn't mean we can't have flaws or doubts, either. No one is perfect. Everyone has their own insecurities and stretches of doubt, myself very much included. That's part of being human.

I'm not talking about the normal insecurities everyone has. I'm not talking about resource insecurities, the real fear that comes with trying to survive.

I'm referring to the insecurity of the Self.

It's something much deeper and more foundational than low self-esteem or shaky confidence. It's insecurity about the Self as an entity. And it's the human quality I've come to believe sits at the crux of some of the worst things people do: manipulation, deception, betrayal, revenge.

It's the Self that was never fully built. Never built on anything internal, so it came to rely entirely on external validation. I'm not a psychologist, and the clinical definitions aren't really the point. But there's a network in the brain, the Default Mode Network (DMN), tied to your sense of self. It's active when you think about who you are, your story, your identity. It's where your internal picture of yourself gets formed.

For most people, that picture is steady but malleable. You can be criticized. You're open to feedback. You're willing to be disliked, even misunderstood. You take ownership, and you can still advocate for your own perspective. We can all take an ego hit every now and then. No one necessarily likes it, but we do it. It's messy and painful, but it's human.

For the deeply insecure, that picture was never built on anything internal, so it gets built on external supply instead: admiration, being right, being the best in the room, always being liked. Psychologists have a name for it: contingent self-worth. A sense of self that's permanently reliant on what other people think. And when that takes any hit, there's nothing beneath it. So they have to protect that image, at whatever cost. Not out of malice, usually, but because there's nothing else there.

What does this look like? That's the hard part. There's no single profile, because it's not a personality type.

Sometimes, it looks like being nice. It's the person who sources their entire self from their image, from being admired. We all know the ones, the picture-perfect everything. Nice to your face, knife behind your back.

That's what I mean about New York being kind, not nice. The kindness is real. People tell you the truth because they think you deserve it. Nice is different; it's surface-level. Other places, say Arizona (I'm sure it's lovely, I do hear good things about Scottsdale), are plenty nice. But nice stays on the surface. It's the person who will go to any length to protect the image, because the image is where their whole self-worth lives. It's the only ground they've got.

And in full honesty, I didn't set out to write about any of this. Never in my wildest imagination did I think I would have to. Because I've been building The Human Edge around a simple premise: our humanity is our competitive advantage.

I wanted to focus on the best and brightest aspects of humanity, how we cultivate, build, and protect those. The intangibles we build intentionally, practice consistently, evolve continuously. The qualities that make us, us. The qualities that only get stronger when we're together.

These past months didn't disprove any of that. If anything, they reaffirmed the existence and importance of it all. What was unexpected was seeing the shadows of those qualities: what's left in a person who never builds them at all.

What happens when we don't have, can't practice, and don't care about them. Self-obsession fills the space where self-awareness should be. Superficial performance stands in for real presence. The darker qualities aren't the opposite of the human edge. They're its absence.

These months showed me both. The best of humanity: kindness, generosity, and camaraderie. And the side I hadn't been exposed to, until now: deceit, manipulation, betrayal.

The thing is, the darker side doesn't win. Not really. It can look like winning for a while, but it never holds, because the whole thing is performative. And you can only fake it so well for so long. Eventually the image cracks, and there was never anything underneath to catch the fall.

The human edge is the opposite. It's the intangible qualities that can't be faked into being, because they're built. They're not perfect, but they're practiced, rep by rep. Refined, not performed. Imperfect, but very real.

And most of all, they're chosen.

Because whatever your circumstances, you get to choose what you make of them. Whether you win, or lose, you decide the story they become. You decide the lessons, in your own time, on your own terms. No one gets to choose those for you. They're yours to decide and yours to define.

That's what it means to build your human edge. Build yours.

Much love,
Joyce