Interaction of Open Minds.
“You’re really easy to talk to,” is the sentence that more often than not trickles off the lips of people I have known for a short while. It could be our very first conversation or the fifth time we see one another, but for some reason it almost always comes up.
“I just feel like I could say anything.”
You can.
“For some reason I am telling you things that I wouldn’t otherwise share with a near stranger.”
Because I’ll allow you to.
Because I won’t judge.
Because I am not afraid to open up to you in ways you might find unexpected.
And as such, you might lose a bit of that fear, too.
It is rare for me to have known someone for longer than a month without them knowing about some of my losses, about my obsessions with Joe Rogan and raunchy writers, about my sporadic way of life. Not because I find myself so interesting that I feel like I should share the overload of who I am with whoever wants to listen, but because this way of openly sharing what makes me tick is the only way I know how to connect with other human beings. If I descend to talks about the amount of rain in London, I am either having a truly uninspired day and don’t really feel like interacting at all (which does not happen often) or I just don’t feel the connection with the person I am speaking to (which I tend to attribute to a sort of psychological wavelength that just doesn’t always interconnect with all human beings, which doesn’t mean that they are any ‘more’ or ‘less’ than I am, just that they are different).
It doesn’t happen often that I find a reason to judge another human being. Because there’s rarely another person I know well enough to feel like I can accurately make a judgment about their way of thinking or living.
The one thought that remains inside my mind at all times is this, “I might be wrong, I am often wrong.” Which is a very grounding idea.
You see, something inside of me loves being involved in the problem-solving mode of other human beings. I love being able to go deep in conversation and find all the intricate ways in which the other person thinks and decides and lives. And when we are in such an exchange, their worries often come afloat. Now, there’s not a lot in life I enjoy more (for reasons I cannot quite explain) than shutting up at this precise moment to let their stories flow out of their mouths like an ancient waterfall and to then, together, find little ways to crawl up out of their place of worry.
But though I do at times advise, I will always let them know that I might be wrong, because I am often wrong.
I do not have all the answers but I love to help where I can.
I’ll listen to all your stories without judgment.
And I think having an open mind and letting go of the fear of laying our souls bare in front of others are the key to having open, fearless, honest conversation.
Which I believe is the only type of interaction that truly matters.
