People who are genuinely nice but have almost no close friends are often the ones the world describes as “lovely” — and the word is doing more work than the people using it realize, because “lovely” is what we call a person who is easy to be around, and being easy to be around is not the same thing as being known, and a life full of people calling you lovely can be one of the lonelier lives a person can build
There was a woman I used to work with in my early thirties who everyone adored. She remembered birthdays without Facebook reminders. She checked in when people were ill. She stayed late to help overwhelmed colleagues without making a performance of it. Whenever someone described her, they used exactly the same word. Lovely. Not smart, … Read more