My wife recently spend a long afternoon with one of her old *friends*.
Afterwards she remarked that her pal, whom she hadn't seen in ages, didn't ask a single question about what was going on with my wife and her family - this was over a period of something like 6 hours.
As far as I'm concerned, that's not exactly a *friend* or someone worthy of spending any scarce personal time with. When one half of a relationship becomes acutely aware of this kind of imbalance....I say it's definitely time to short that friendship.
We all have acquaintances that, well, don't ever initiate getting together or even make any efforts in that regard. And there is certainly some real value in maintaining skeletal relationships with old friends. (Of course, some of these clowns need to be severed too!)
But *not asking you any questions* is a clear warning sign and not just with friends; it also applies to strangers and random people that you meet. If you're sitting there at a party or something and some self-orbiting Moron doesn't express any interest in the basics (like where you're from!)....well, I quickly cross them off my list.
I submit that it's beyond merely a sign of vanity or social retardation.
People who aren't genuinely interested in the lives of others may very well be intellectually retarded to boot. Have any of y'all ever met an incurious, closed-minded genius?
I'd like to suggest a new metric for assessing IQ.
How often do you Google?
Seriously. It's sort of a corollary to that old maxim *there's no such thing as a stupid question* which casts the kid who's afraid to raise his hand in a government school classroom.
Think about it. The WWW holds the answers to almost every basic question imaginable. Only a certified Moron would not want to tap that resource, again and again.
Plus....I myself Google stuff all day long! Ergo I'm clearly very...
3 comments:
It's true. I am amazed at people who are just not curious about the other person. Even my son who is not even six asks questions like - how old is your kid - when does he turn five etc etc if he sees me talking to someone new at the park and I introduce him. May be it is to prove that they are one up and don't give a damn about you. What ever it is - if friends are that way - it is time to cut the off.
Thanks - now I feel better about googling! :)
How do you manage to get these pictures and buttons (like the self-centered one - good one)?!
A.
Where do I find them?
Google of course.
First I think I searched for *talking about themself* and variations thereof.
Then I searched for *vanity*.
Ultimately I found them, I think, by simply Googling self-centered.
I'm not sure the two are connected. People who don't show interest in a friend's life, even enough to ask a question about her in a six hour visit, are either embroiled in some huge personal crisis or simply self-centered.
I've run into plenty of people whose intellectual curiosity made them fascinating and often successful, but that didn't make them good listeners, good friends, or summon a glimmer of empathy.
There's something called a scale of attuned responses (I wrote about it here http://lauragraceweldon.com/2011/03/30/how-to-listen-how-to-be-heard/) which you should only look at if you're prepared to be glum about how poorly most people really listen.
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