In this world of constant connectivity and information sharing, I can never believe how little some people know about the people they are friends with.
Recently, I was visiting a friend who I hadn’t seen in a while. Upon returning to her apartment to watch something called TLC as after-dinner entertainment (when it comes to TV, I’m basically a luddite, and after being exposed to TLC I know why), we ran into some of her close friends who live in her building. They were interesting in an exemplary way that transcends my propensity to find everyone interesting – one recently having moved to New York from Oregon, one an accomplished sculptor, one an aspiring rapper (who I was particularly excited about, seeing as I’ve had little occasion to mingle with aspiring rappers).
In the twenty minutes that we loitered in front of the building talking, I found myself playing my usual role in most conversations — that of the inquirer. Asking questions of, “Where in Oregon? Book Soup? That place is my favorite! You volunteered with Dave Eggers’ writing program? I love Assassination Vacation, too!”
When we disengaged and headed upstairs, I continued asking my friend some of the questions I hadn’t gotten a chance to ask her friends: How long had Oregon been in Manhattan? Did she like it, or did she miss the west coast? And what about rapper? Did he have a manager or contract? Did he rap solo or with a posse? Did the sculptor show in galleries or sell independently? Had he gone to school for art, or just struck out on his own with talent in place of training?
My friend knew the answer to exactly none of these questions, and furthermore acted as if it had genuinely never crossed her mind to ask. How long had she been friends with these people, you want to know? Years. They are over at one another’s apartments nearly every night. They eat together, drink together, share confidences about sex/drugs/rock and roll, watch each others’ pets when they go out of town. And yet my friend didn’t even know if Oregon was happy in New York, if the benefit outweighed the cost, if she was ever homesick. Didn’t know how the rapper made a living basic enough to live in her building. Didn’t know how the artist proceeded after she completed a work and put the paintbrush down.
Mind you, this was no revelation to me. Many, nary most, of the people we interact with on a daily basis don’t entertain proactive curiosities about the people in front of them. It’s evident in a million ways – the way the some people will have a better conversation with their iPhone that they will with you when you’re sitting right in front of them, the frequency with which lazy queries like, “Really?” are dropped with divided attention, the hurtful blank looks you get back when you’ve shared something you care about with someone you are willing to reveal yourself to.
I don’t want to regress and get bogged down in a conversation of social media and its bi-product – rampant self-interest – because I’ve already been down that road on this URL before. Do I think that contributes to the fact that people show little genuine interest in one another? Of course I do. But I think mainly that curiosity in general is suffering, and if you can’t wonder about what event will do humanity in or the hundreds of stories an airplane holds as it hurdles through the blue, how can you care about where a single person is from or who they really are?
There’s no excuse for being lazy in our attention to others. It’s a choice, not an inherited trait, and a particularly unflattering choice at that. Everyone has to tune out the churning rapids of information output to stay sane and drown out naysayers to preserve perspective, but when it comes to intimate interaction with people who mean you no harm, listening costs very little. For me, this kind of listening has provided some of my most welcome surprises and vitamin-packed food for thought. I bet the people who are the subjects of those amazing stories on This American Life probably have many friends who would tune in mid-broadcast having never heard the story and having no clue that they even knew the person whose voice emanated from their speakers.
Me writing about this is admittedly somewhat absurd given that I’m not an extroverted social connector by any stretch of the imagination. I don’t actively engage people who sit down next to me at Starbucks. Don’t share gripes with the people standing next to me in the checkout line. Don’t ask the pest control man his life story. But for whatever reason, I seem to be on the receiving end of these engagements constantly. Probably because I give off the vibe of being the type of person who will be too meek/mild/polite to disengage you once you crank up the engine. But I’m usually annoyed as hell when someone plops down next to me and starts talking as I’m taking my first sips of coffee and re-immersing myself in the wonky world of David McCullogh’s accounting of Lewis & Clark. People can be invasive and intrusive. Trust me, I get it. Woe be unto whoever prevents me from peacefully enjoying my morning routine of NPR, caffeine, and half-hearted attempts at crosswords. But the bottom line is that what I hear as a result of these raids on my solitude often ends up trumping my initial inner rage blackout. Often, but not always.
But the object of this post was not really strangers at coffee shops, but the people we call friends, those with whom we have relationships. And I don’t think the meaningful kind of sharing should come at the drop of a hat. I am a big, big fan of the concept of gradual revelation as reward. As in the greatest gift any person can give to any other person is an honest attempt to express who they are, little by little, conversation by conversation. And talking about boyfriends and bands can be part of that. But, as was proven by my friend, it certainly can’t give you a rounded impression of who someone is and what drives them.
This little rant was initially aimed at a single selfish point: I’m getting tired of always being the one doing the asking and rarely the one being asked when it comes to my relationships with other people. Of those loose group of friends we tend to count off in multiples of ten, I can count those amongst them who are Askers on one hand and not even use all the fingers. What people say about being lucky if you have two or three deeply entrenched, life-giving friendships is true. And I’ll bet if you think about who you enjoy these strong relationships with, you’ll land on those friends who are as curious about you as you are about them. Not that you should only be curious if your curiosity is going to beget someone else’s interest in you. True curiosity is its own reward. And yet.
Perhaps many relationships are bound to be frustrating or lacking for the people who are curious about everyone and everything everywhere, who want more than anything to discover the things that make others tick (thereby finding new reasons to tick themselves). But it still makes me sad, and it still frustrates me. There’s nothing more maddening than choosing to constantly offering up little parts of yourself to people who will never understand what they’re receiving, all the while knowing you have no one to blame for doing so but yourself.
It becomes apparent that any relationship truly worth having requires a person to be not just willing, but desirous of being both the Asker and the Asked in equal measure, forever.
This story has no moral, and I don’t have any suggestions for improving the situation. If I were Roald Dahl, I could probably weave this into a timeless, poignant story full of teachable moments humorously delivered by a crotchety old man. But the fact remains that I am me, markedly less gifted than Roald, and only moved to comment on something like this when it has been pressing on me and disturbing my own life.
So I guess I’ll wrap up by simply saying this, both to you, intangible reader, and to myself: There will be an ever-increasing parade of people who would rather stare at their phones or gripe about their sex lives than actually engage with another human being in a way that passes muster with the Askers. But that doesn’t mean you should stop asking. And for God’s sake, whatever you do, don’t lose sight of those rare moments when you opened your mouth to ask only to find that a question was already being asked of you.
