Remember: Within many a superficially boring person, there is an interesting person waiting, all too patiently, to get out. Sometimes, to access the inner person, you have to probe as much as tact will allow—or even to prod, in the manner of a reporter or a shrink or a hiker poking a forest-dwelling furball with a stick to see if it’s alive. But if you do this, you will have become an active, attractive listener. Cultivate the rare talent for “eloquent silence” described, in 1842, by one Orlando Sabertash, author of one of the countless guides titled The Art of Conversation: [The] man who listens with easy attention to the saddest prosing,—who delights the speaker with the impression his words seem to produce: this man, who only throws in an assenting smile, puts a single, well-timed question, or expresses a doubt, certain of being easily removed,—is the man of real genius, a sort of nonpareil in fact, and the rarest of all apparitions in modern society.
Posted on: Thu, 07 Aug 2014 23:38:11 +0000
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