21 | October | 2011 | I choose how I will spend the rest of my life

Daily Archives: October 21, 2011

I Talk To People

Posted on October 21, 2011 | 31 comments

“Nothing is a waste of time
if you use the experience wisely.”
Auguste Rodin

Among my favourite bloggers is Susan from Coming East. I really believe that we live parallel lives. Today she blogged about earworms. I wrote a post on this subject several months ago when I was new to blogging.

A couple of days ago Susan wrote about her delight in talking to other people.

I too love talk to people. I make instant friendships and am still in contact with people whom I met many years ago in places as diverse as planes, ferries, hotels, supermarket carparks and restaurants. Not to mention those I met at school functions and other gatherings. I have a lifelong friend that I met in the supermarket carpark, another than I met on the Inter-island ferry between the north and south islands in New Zealand and yet others with whom I keep in contact many years after we met on holiday in various parts of the world. And now, of course, I have my blogging friends.

I seem to be the person that people talk to. When we are out for dinner within a few minutes I have heard from the waitress where she comes from, what she is doing here in Wellington, who her parents are and where she will go from here once her visa expires.

Today I met a young man from India and again, within a few minutes I had his life story.

I do know that it is because I am interested in people and usually ask the first (maybe innocuous) question, that they unfold and tell me their life stories. And I guess it is because of this that I took to being a life coach with such ease. I am interested in people. I love to hear about them; about their lives and about their dreams; about their wishes and hopes for their future.

I am fortunate in that I have always had the ability to make friends easily. My mother used to say that I could/would be friends with the devil himself. As I have aged I have grown more selective about the friends I have made, but the ability to talk and communicate with others has grown year by year.

When they were growing up, my children were sometimes embarrassed at their mother speaking and thereby interacting with strangers, but now they accept that this is who I am.

So I shall continue to talk to strangers. I shall continue to learn about them and perhaps make friends with them. Isn’t this part of what being human is all about?

The time has come, the Walrus said,

To talk of many things:

Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax —
Of cabbages — and kings —

And why the sea is boiling hot–And whether pigs have wings.”

“But wait a bit,” the Oysters cried, Before we have our chat;

For some of us are out of breath,And all of us are fat!”

“No hurry!” said the Carpenter. They thanked him much for that.”
Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)