The School of Life

by The School Of Life

  The gift of being interesting is neither exclusive nor reliant on exceptional talent; it requires only honesty and focus. The person we call interesting is in essence someone alive to what we all deeply want from social intercourse: an uncensored glimpse of what life looks like through the eyes of another person and reassurance that we are not entirely alone with all that feels most bewildering, peculiar and frightening in us.

  VULNERABILITY

  There is a particular way of discussing oneself which, however long it goes on for, never fails to win friends, reassure audiences, comfort couples, bring solace to the single and buy the goodwill of enemies: the confession of vulnerability.

  To hear that we have failed, that we are sad, that it was our fault, that our partners don’t seem to like us much, that we are lonely, that we have wished it might all be over – there is scarcely anything nicer anyone could learn.

  This is often taken to signal a basic nastiness in human nature, but the truth is more poignant. We are not so much crowing when we hear of failure as deeply reassured – reassured to know that we aren’t humiliatingly alone with the appalling difficulties of being alive. It is all too easy to suspect that we have been uniquely cursed in the extent of our troubles, of which we seldom find evidence in the lives around us.

  We put so much effort into being perfect. But the irony is that it’s failure that charms, because others so need to hear external evidence of problems with which we are all too lonely: how un-normal our sex lives are; how arduous our careers are proving; how unsatisfactory our family can be; how worried we are pretty much all the time.

  Revealing any of these wounds might, of course, place us in great danger. Others could laugh; the media could have a field day. That’s the point. We get close by revealing things that would, in the wrong hands, be capable of inflicting humiliation on us. Friendship is the dividend of gratitude that flows from an acknowledgement that one has offered something very valuable by talking: the key to one’s self-esteem and dignity. It’s deeply poignant that we should expend so much effort on trying to look strong before the world when, all the while, it’s really only ever the revelation of the somewhat embarrassing, sad, melancholy and anxious bits of us that renders us endearing to others and transforms strangers into friends.

  WORRYING WHETHER OR NOT THEY LIKE US

  One of the most acute questions we ask ourselves in relation to new friends and acquaintances is whether or not they like us. The question feels so significant because, depending on how we answer it in our minds, we will either take steps to deepen the friendship or, as is often the case, immediately make moves to withdraw from it so as to spare ourselves humiliation and embarrassment.

  But what is striking and sad is how essentially passive we are in relation to this enquiry. We assume that there is a more or less binary answer, that it is wholly in the remit of the other person to settle it, and that there is nothing much we could do to shift the verdict one way or the other. Either someone wants to be our friend or they don’t, and the answer, while it is about us, is essentially disconnected from any of our own initiatives.

  We are hereby failing to apply to other people a basic lesson we can appreciate well enough when we study the functioning of our own judgements: we often don’t know what we think of other people. Our moods hover and sway. There are days when we can see the point of someone and others when their positive sides elude us entirely. But, and this is the key point, what usually helps us to decide what someone means to us is our sense of what we mean to them.

  The possibility of friendship between people therefore frequently hangs in the balance because both sides are, privately, waiting for a sign from the other as to whether or not they are liked before they dare to show (or even register) any enthusiasm of their own. Both sides proceed under the tacit assumption that there is some a priori verdict about their value that the other person will be developing in their mind that has no connection to how they themselves behave and is impervious to anything they could say or do.

  Under pressure, we forget the fundamental malleability within the question of whether someone wants to be friends with us or not. Most of it depends on how we behave to them. If we have a little courage and can keep our deep suspicions of ourselves and our terror of their rejection of us at bay, we have every opportunity to turn the situation in our direction. We can dare to persuade them to see us in a positive light, chiefly by showing a great deal of evidence that we see them in a positive light. We can apply the full range of techniques of charm: we can remember small things about them, display an interest in what they have been up to, laugh at their witty moments and sympathize with them around their sorrows.

  Though our instinct is to be close to superstitious in our understanding of why people like us, we have to be extremely unlucky to land on people who genuinely show no interest in a friendship with us once we have carried out a full set of charming manoeuvres with any level of sincerity and basic tact.

  Friendships cannot develop until one side takes a risk and shows they are ready to like even when there’s as yet no evidence that they are liked back. We have to realize that whether or not the other person likes us is going to depend on what we do, not – mystically – what we by nature ‘are’, and that we have the agency to do rather a lot of things. Even though we may initially get very few signs of their interest (they might be looking a little distracted and behaving in an offhand way), we should assume that this is only a legacy of a restraint that springs from fear that they are not able to please – and that so long as we keep showing them warmth and encouragement to appease their self-suspicion, the barriers will eventually come down.

  It is sad enough when two people dislike each other. It is even sadder when two people fail to connect because both parties defensively but falsely guess that the other doesn’t like them – and yet, out of low self-worth, takes no risk whatever to alter the situation. We should stop worrying quite so much whether or not people like us, and make that far more interesting and socially useful move: concentrate on showing that we like them.

  WARMTH

  There is a kind of host who follows every rule of etiquette and outward sign of civility yet who may nevertheless come across as ‘coldly polite’, leaving guests bored and without any wish to return for more.

  What separates a cold from a warm person are not intentions. Both warm and cold characters may be equally full of goodwill and ache with an inward desire for closeness. At stake is a guess about what is going on in another person. From a touching modesty, the coldly polite believe in appearances. They trust that the outward respectability, composure and self-possession of those they encounter must be more or less the whole truth about them. They believe that people are as much in need, and as sane, as they indicate they are on the surface: that is, they believe that they are fine. Their way of hosting others is therefore guided by a sense of the inherent invulnerability and high-mindedness of their guests: they assume that these figures must wish to speak only of serious topics, especially cultural and political ones, that they will want to sit formally and eat a prescribed number of courses, that they would have no interest in small signs of reassurance, that they won’t wish to give expression to wayward and absurd sides of themselves, that they won’t have any awkward bodily urges or needs, and that their minds will be resolute and well-lit places. In other words, the coldly polite do not apply the knowledge they have of themselves to their interactions with others.

  The warm, on the other hand, make a well-founded guess that those they encounter, despite the observable initial evidence, are not what they seem. They may look adult and composed, but the truth will be reassuringly more complicated. They will, beneath the surface, be intensely confused about many things, in great need of comforting and play, filled with regrets, embarrassed about their bodies, troubled by peculiar urges and beset by a sense of failure. The warm know themselves well enough to walk past the surface presentation and assume that their own stranger selves will have
echoes in the lives of others. That is why they might suggest that we get down from the table and have some toasted sandwiches on the sofa, or might want to dance to some songs popular long ago, or might need an extra cushion for our back, or might need to spend quite a long time in the bathroom and might want a magazine while inside. The warm know how sad an illness can leave us feeling and so will remember to ask if our ears are still giving us trouble; they’ll recall that we’ve had trouble sleeping recently; they’ll understand if we want to take another look at an attractive person they noticed that we spotted in a restaurant. When we spill something, they’ll exclaim that they’re so glad it’s us because this sort of thing happens to them all the time. The warmly polite person knows that beneath the competent surface everyone is clumsy, frightened, desirous and fascinatingly unbalanced – and they bring this knowledge to bear in every encounter, whatever its outwardly forbidding nature.

  This knowledge prevents the warm person from being, at points, overfriendly or cheerful. They do not equate friendliness with a relentlessly upbeat tone. They know how much is sad and anxious in everyone. They don’t want to flatter in us ways that could raise the cost of revealing anything more despairing or confused. They leave the door open for a possible need to admit at pretty much any point to something highly shameful. They seem permanently ready to travel with us to the darker, more panicked sides of our minds.

  They are in this sense the opposite of the voices we so frequently hear in commercial contexts that ask us if we’re having a great day today and that wish us a perfect afternoon in a city we’ve just touched down in. The warm don’t sidestep the knowledge that we may feel like crying even in front of a beautiful entrée or that the thought of returning home after a business trip may be quietly horrific. They don’t insist on treating us like cheerful Martians encountering broken, complex humans for the first time.

  It can seem like an act of extreme respect to imagine that others are not as troubled or perturbed as we are. Much of our childhood experience subtly reinforces the belief that there are categories of grown-ups, starting with teachers, that share in none of the child’s fears. We may, at a certain age, need such an illusion to make the world feel stable enough. But we pay a high price in loneliness for this faith in the face value of figures of authority. True adulthood begins with a firmer hold on the notion that the solid and dignified person will, behind the scenes, almost certainly be craving something quite ordinary – something as unelevated and as human as a hug, a cry or a glass of milk.

  TEASING

  We are so used to thinking of teasing in its cruel, mocking forms and hating it as such that it can sound initially implausible to think that there could be such a thing as good, affectionate teasing, a kind that we might long for and feel honoured to receive.

  The origins of our need to be teased lie in the way that we have all ended up, in one form or another, unbalanced and boxed in by our excesses. Perhaps we have grown too serious and committed to scholarship and mental activity. Or we are too cynical and unready to admit to any need for innocence and spontaneous joy. Or we have invested too much in being refined and luxurious in our way of life.

  The person who teases us, and attracts our gratitude for doing so, recognizes the imbalance and appeals, behind the back of our dominant selves, to an unrepresented subordinate side of us: the one that isn’t merely intellectual, or that would love a chance sometimes to smile and try out naivety, or that would be reassured by an invitation to mop the floor or go camping. The good teaser aims to reform us, not through lectures, but by encouraging finely administered tart jokes at our surface selves. They consider our ponderousness and nickname us ‘Hamlet’, they note our commitment to the dark side of existence and ask us if there are any rules against Weltschmerz smiling, they hand us the dishcloth and wonder if Sir or Madam might like to scrub the lasagne dish.

  And when this happens, we don’t hate them for it. It feels like being nicely tickled and we want more, admiring their insights into our imbalances and the frank accuracy with which they are attempting to bolster certain sides of us. They know that we are not merely academic or world-weary or grand, and sense how much we are longing to find a way out. The English critic Cyril Connolly captured the phenomenon in relation to weight: ‘Imprisoned in every fat man, a thin man is wildly signalling to be let out.’ The image is ripe for extension: inside every bitter cynic, a bruised optimist is looking for an opening. Inside the rule-bound, precise, formal person, a playful, silly self is hoping for release. Inside the important person admired for their status is a child who wants to be liked for themselves.

  In Alan Hollinghurst’s novel The Line of Beauty, there is a moment when the narrator, Nick, ends up at a large party attended by the then British prime minister Mrs Thatcher. Pop music is playing loudly. Daringly, Nick goes up and introduces himself to the political leader and asks if she might like to dance. Like every good teaser, he can guess that there is someone struggling to be let out. There is a moment of acute hesitation and what looks almost like pain on the prime minister’s face, but then a large smile breaks out and she replies, ‘You know, I’d like that very much.’

  It is gratifying to be warmly teased because it is a sign that the teaser has bothered to study a struggle within ourselves and perceptively taken the side of the under-represented party. They have not been intimidated, as so many others are, by a front we don’t ourselves wholly identify with or like. They know it cannot be the whole story and have made a kindly, accurate guess as to what the reality might be. We are being taught a lesson, in the very nicest way, without sternness or admonition. Our smile isn’t just a sign that we have found something funny, but an admission of how much we ourselves would like to change – and how much we are relying on our friends to help us do so.

  One of the largest questions we can ask ourselves, one which directly points us to the areas of our nature we should like to reform, is: what would I like to be teased about?

  THE GOOD LISTENER

  Being a good listener is one of the most important and enchanting life skills anyone can have. Yet few of us know how to do it, not because we are evil but because no one has taught us how and – a related point – few have listened sufficiently well to us. So we come to social life greedy to speak rather than listen, hungry to meet others but reluctant to hear them. Friendship degenerates into a socialized egoism.

  Like most things, the answer lies in education. Our civilization is full of great books on how to speak – Cicero’s On the Orator and Aristotle’s Rhetoric were two of the greatest in the ancient world – but sadly no one has ever written a book called The Listener. There are a range of things that the good listener is doing that make it so nice to spend time in their company. Without necessarily quite realizing it, we’re often propelled into conversation by something that feels both urgent and somehow undefined. We’re bothered at work; we’re toying with more ambitious career moves; we’re not sure if so-and-so is right for us; a relationship is in difficulties; we’re fretting about something or feeling a bit low about life in general (without being able to put a finger on exactly what’s wrong); or perhaps we’re very excited and enthusiastic about something, though the reasons for our passion are tricky to pin down.

  At heart, all these are issues in search of elucidation. The good listener knows that we’d ideally move – via conversation with another person – from a confused, agitated state of mind to one that was more focused and (hopefully) more serene. Together with them, we’d work out what was really at stake. But in reality this tends not to happen, because there isn’t enough of an awareness of the desire and need for clarification within conversation. There aren’t enough good listeners. So people tend to assert rather than analyse. They restate in many different ways the fact that they are worried, excited, sad or hopeful, and their interlocutor listens but doesn’t assist them to discover more. Good listeners fight against this with a range of conversational gambits.

  They hover as the oth
er speaks: they offer encouraging little remarks of support, they make gentle positive gestures – a sigh of sympathy, a nod of encouragement, a strategic ‘hmm’ of interest. All the time they are egging the other to go deeper into issues. They love saying, ‘Tell me more about …’; ‘I was fascinated when you said …’; ‘Why did that happen, do you think?’ or ‘How did you feel about that?’ The good listener takes it for granted that they will encounter vagueness in the conversation of others. But they don’t condemn, rush or get impatient, because they see vagueness as a universal and highly significant trouble of the mind that it is the task of a true friend to help with. Often, we’re in the vicinity of something but we can’t quite close in on what’s really bothering or exciting us. The good listener knows we benefit hugely from encouragement to elaborate, to go into greater detail, to push a little further. We need someone who, rather than launch forth, will simply say two rare, magic words: ‘Go on.’ We mention a sibling and they want to know a bit more. What was the relationship like in childhood? How has it changed over time? They’re curious about where our concerns and excitements come from. They ask things like, ‘Why did that particularly bother you?’ ‘Why was that such a big thing for you?’ They keep our histories in mind; they might refer back to something we said before and we feel they’re building up a deeper base of engagement. It’s fatally easy to say vague things: we simply mention that something is lovely or terrible, nice or annoying. But we don’t really explore why we feel this way. The good listener has a productive, friendly suspicion of some of our own first statements and is after the deeper attitudes that are lurking in the background. They take things we say like, ‘I’m fed up with my job’ or ‘My partner and I are having a lot of rows …’ and help us to concentrate on what it really is about the job we don’t like or what the squabbles might deep down be about. They’re bringing to listening an ambition to clear up underlying issues.