Are you boring or interesting?
(photo with caption “Who is a more interesting: Michael Douglas or Gary Player?”)
I was playing golf the other day and a friend told me I was boring. He may have been jesting, as alpha males tend to do, but as Freud told us many years ago, humor invariably contains an attack hidden under the smile and the punchline.
No one wants to be called boring. I’ve always had a deep fear of being boring ever since childhood when my father instructed me to remain silent until I had something interesting to say. I asked him how would I know when I had something interesting to say and he quickly retorted, “I’ll tell you when it’s interesting!”
I’m not alone with this kind of concern. How to be interesting, mesmerizing and fascinating is the central worry of every book publisher, newspaper editor and author alive. Will the story be read? Will the reader be entertained? Will the headline be catchy enough?
George Irish, the head of Hearst Publishing, once told me that all stories must have three components. They must be topical, entertaining, and informative.
“Mirror, mirror on the wall, whose the most interesting of them all?”
I’ve come to notice that during any power lunch among men, the conversation will inevitably degenerate into a contest of who can tell the most impressive story. The stories usually contain a legendary sports figure, a suggestion that one has a close personal relationship with the star and a story arc which leads to the conclusion that something funny, unique or extremely moral happened. And it’s not like any of my friends have taken seminars with George Irish to learn how to do this. The more powerful the man, the more able they are to hold court this way.
My guess is that they feel it’s necessary to maintain dominance by suggesting that they are on equal terms to the star athlete they are talking about. It’s like they are saying: “We’re Chevy Chase and you’re not.” Long ago I gave up on trying to one up these alpha males. If I suggest that I know Tiger Woods, this would be met by a story that they are personal friends with either God or Jesus Christ.
There is a need to impress others at the table in order to gain respect and a little love. And who doesn’t need a little love?
So if you are one of the many who are concerned that the stories you tell are not as interesting as your neighbor’s stories, you may not be surprised to learn that a book has been written on this very subject entitled “How To Be Interesting.” The gist of the book is that you ought to get out and do strange, novel and amazing things so that you will have something interesting to say. The advice is good. One of the primary reasons that people spend small fortunes on travel is so that they can return home and have some interesting stories to tell.
But that leaves you with the bigger problem of finding someone who will listen to your stories. To be listened to is a rare gift and the art of listening may be more rare and more important than the art of storytelling. To be listened to means to be heard, understood, appreciated, admired, and mirrored.
People are dying to tell their stories and to be listened to. Stories are easy enough to find, but audiences are a more precious thing. The point of all this is that boring may be bad and stories may be cool to tell, but the rarest thing of all is to be a kind and appreciative listener. Ears may not be as attractive as mouths and a tongue, but they may be just as important. So let’s hear it for the listeners, those unsung heroes of the dinner table.
And if this story was not as interesting as you had hoped, next week I promise you I will discuss the time I met Rory McIlroy.