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It seems to me that if we want to do both, get joy out of conversation, yet talk to please others rather than ourselves, we must find people who have on their minds things similar to what is on our mind. If we don't do that, then, not being saints, we will just start talking to please ourselves and bore the others, or we will properly submerge ourselves, but will not be able to take it long. We will soon come to feel that conversation at such a price of self-denial is too expensive — and withdraw to a game of solitaire! Luckily, while everybody wants to talk about his own troubles, there is a vast difference in the troubles of people and people. While those of millions differ too much from our own to interest us, those of other millions are very much attuned to our own. When we find such, talking to please them becomes a pleasure, not a frustration. If someone talks about his gains and losses on the stock market, and you have just taken a flyer on the market yourself, you will have little trouble saying what will please him and also yourself. If I am a college teacher, and an accountant friend keeps telling me about his efforts toward promotion or plans to change position, I am quickly bored. But if another college teacher tells about his problems of promotion or change, then I find it quite interesting even though I do not bring my own position into the talk. Having no wife, but having sometimes hoped and feared to have one, I find someone's telling how he "manages" his wife not uninteresting. But having no children, and no likelihood of ever having any, I find it almost intolerable to listen to someone's detailed accounts of his own. Remembering my rules of conversation, I do of course force myself to please him rather than myself, but I take good care not to have to do it a second time. |
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