Yesterday Nahjee told me that I should be a therapist. I pshawed her: I have no such training! Later on, during my shift at AlleyNYC‘s front desk, I got into a conversation with one of the guests. Within ten minutes—before we’d even traded names—I’d managed to find out about his career dissatisfaction, helped him pinpoint a couple of emotionally-fulfilling aspects of his current job, and recommended two books to him (the same two books I recommend to anyone who even breathes a word of life confusion).
I call this quality of mine “nosiness,” though my husband objects to the term. The reality is that I find myself in these sorts of conversations because I have a very low tolerance for small talk. As cheesy as it sounds, I like getting to know the whole person and peeking into someone’s inner life.
My friend Dale and I share the conviction that there are no boring people in the world, that if everyone’s life story were to be treated by a filmmaker, biographer, journalist, or some other professional storyteller, all people’s lives would seem ever so rich and textured. I love talking to people about their lives. I live for this stuff. And I also believe that more people should be trained in the skill of having real, non BS conversations with their fellow human beings.
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