Some people are said to have the "gift of gab." I've got something different. I mean, I can chat and schmooze and so forth, and I'm pretty good at it, but that's not what I can do that really impresses me.
I've got a "gift of silence."
I can listen to people. So that they talk.
It always catches me off-guard a little. It always surprises me, and amazes me, and yet, it's also totally expected.
How often does the following happen to you:
You're talking to someone you know casually, not very well. Maybe a co-worker that you've worked with two or three times before. Someone you took a class with once. Somone you've enountered socially. The co-worker is a perfectly normal person, socialized the way that most adults are socialized in this culture -- not a geek, just a normal person.
You say something like, "So, how are you?"
And they answer. Honestly.
"I've been really depressed, and I don't want to go onto medication for it. I've been talking to my doctors about it, but I don't know," or, "I'm worried about how expensive it's going to be to have a child," or "I've been worried that my spouse and I are drifting apart." Things like that.
Real answers. Answers about how they are really feeling, about what's important to them, and what's truly, deeply inside them. And they're comfortable talking to you about this, really, for as long as you both have to talk. Five minutes, ten minutes, two hours. Whatever.
Happens to me all the time.
I don't know what it is. People just assume that I'm trustworthy, and that they can talk to me, and that anything private they tell me will not go further.
I am trustworthy and private things they tell me won't go further. None of those things I mentioned above are actual examples of things which people have told me. But they're things LIKE that.
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