A person by nature cannot be boring, just as a river bank or, say, a tree or a dandelion cannot be. Why is it that many of us are so afraid of the prospect of being boring people? The philosophers of Alain de Botton’s «School of Life» explain how to overcome this uncertainty.
When we go out into the outside world and begin to communicate with others, many of us are haunted by the fear that, deep down, we are rather boring people. But the fact is, no one is ever truly boring. The danger lies only in our inability to understand ourselves, or in the inability or indecision to convey to others what we want to tell them.
Great proof that there are no boring people, insignificant facts and objects — works of art. Many paintings depict not unique objects, but the simplest things seen in a special way. These canvases speak of the artist’s sincere interest in reality — unadorned, as it is.
Take, for example, one of the landscapes by Danish artist Kristen Kebke. At first glance, the area is unremarkable, and to the average person it would seem like unsuitable material for a picture. But Kebke, like a real artist, knew how to tune his perception so that it remained fresh, unclouded by stereotypes and helped to weave a small masterpiece from the canvas of everyday life.
A person, like a landscape, by its nature simply cannot be boring. A person in his nature, shown honestly and without embellishment, is always interesting. The interlocutor whom we call boring, most likely, simply does not have the courage to show us what he is. When we express our true feelings and desires—how much we want something, what we regret, who we envy, and what we dream about—we inevitably reveal our attraction.
Believe in your feelings
An interesting person is not the one with whom spectacular, exciting stories happen every now and then. Not the one who travels the world, meets famous people or finds himself in the epicenter of major geopolitical events. And not even the one who can beautifully retell sophisticated scientific theories.
An interesting person is one who has raised an attentive listener in himself, who knows himself well, knows how to appeal to his feelings, sees and understands the strangeness and drama of our life.
What prevents us from showing up, showing the whole world how interesting we are? First and foremost, we are boring when we do not believe that our feelings can interest others. We are accustomed to interpreting events one-sidedly — we have been taught that it is so right. When we tell a story, we focus on external details (where we were, when we arrived, what the weather was like), instead of trying to convey feelings: a sharp pang of guilt, a sudden attraction, a fit of blues, frustration at work, a strange euphoria at three in the morning …
Often, we ignore feelings to protect ourselves from ideas and images that threaten our idea of what is “worthy and right.” We prefer to talk to others about something unimportant, because we lack the courage to take a closer look at ourselves.
Each of us can become an interesting person — someone who keenly feels life and understands others well at the moment of communication.
Agree, the average five-year-old child seems to most of us less boring than a 45-year-old adult. What allows children to capture all our attention? Are their feelings more interesting than ours? The reason is different: children demonstrate them without censoring them. Their spontaneity is a sign that they are still true to themselves and therefore at any moment they are ready to frankly tell us what they really think about their grandmother and younger brother and what needs to be done so that everyone on the planet lives well. So we end up bored because of the fatal choices we make in our youth, when we most want to appear normal.
Another problem is that we do not know how to recognize our feelings well enough. And when, for example, we are overwhelmed by emotions, we are not able to explain them. We will say that the situation was «amazing», «nightmarish» or «incredible», without giving any examples and details that would allow the interlocutor to understand what, in fact, was the matter. We can seem boring not so much because of the unwillingness to share our life, but because we ourselves do not know and understand it well.
Fortunately, everything is in our hands. Each of us can become an interesting person — someone who keenly feels life and understands others well at the moment of communication. Those who know how to convey their perception of life to others. Someone who gives us the confidence that, no matter how strong, strange and disturbing our experiences and emotions may be, we are not alone.
Source: School of Life.