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Personality Adjustment for Conversation - part 2
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They say that many of the best marriages grow out of a girl's determinedly listening to what is on the fellow's mind, as if it were on hers — listening, as it were, to all his problems in the hope of someday becoming one of them! Actually this is exactly what happens when we submerge what is on our mind and sacrificingly, unselfishly, listen and comment on what is on another's. In this way, we become almost necessary to the other, we become a most valued friend to him. The urge to have a willing sharer of one's problems is so great in mankind that you can attract almost anyone with Polonius' "hoops of steel," if you sympathetically soak up his problems. You must do so judiciously, of course, and graciously, so that the talker feels that both of you have shared each other's troubles, not that he effusively spilled his own troubles unilaterally. A saint who is in full sympathy with the problems of others will have this judiciousness and grace, as a gift peculiar to his saintliness. But what about the rest of us who are not saints, who still have too much of the old Adam in us to give up our share of the conversational pie?
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. It seems to me it is a necessary qualification of a good conversationalist not only to avoid boring others but also to avoid being bored himself. So as not to have to suffer twice what does not at all interest me, I first of all consider avoiding getting into a conversation with the person altogether. If I find that impractical, in that he lives next door or works in the same shop or is related to my second cousin or if I need him for some of his other qualities, then I discover which of the several things that might be on his mind are on my mind too. Thereupon, when I meet him, I maneuver the talk around to those topics. In this way, we can both be happy.
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