Elevate my thinking
"Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow grow, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation." -George Washington
Just had to post that one.
Very interesting.
Your ability to select what to reveal and what to conceal on your blog makes it the fantastic read it is - always personal but never embarrassingly intimate in a way that makes the reader want to turn away. For me, that really is the marker of a good blog - or, rather, what distinguishes a good blog from a bad one.
The web is awash with blogs in which people recount the minutiae of their lives in the most phenomenal detail, without any awareness that what they're writing effectively amounts to standing on a street corner shouting "Me! Look at me! Isn't my life great / terrible / IMPORTANT?!" By contrast, the blogs I most enjoy reading aren't so self-absorbed, those which draw upon facets of personal experience to say something interesting in more general terms rather than claiming (implicitly or otherwise) that it's only this person's own personal experience that's important. And, in a nutshell, that's why I love your writing!
For me, attention-seeking on that level becomes intolerable when someone who has those tendencies then expects you to return the gesture. It's that idea intimacy can be coerced that irritates me most. Sure, I've gone through periods of time when I've yearned for a specific person's confidence and intimacy, but trying to win it through force seems incredibly childish.
Now, if only I had the nerve to repeat that final paragraph to certain people. I am someone who's regarded as a good listener - a good shoulder to cry on, even - and truly, honestly, I don't mind. Indeed, sometimes I'm even honoured that people confide in me. But not those for whom it's a one-way street - not those who will tell me the intricate (and I mean very intricate) details of certain problems, will want to talk about it for hours and hours and hours, and then - when I require a mere moment of their time for some advice or a brief bit of help - will suddenly have something far more pressing to do. Or even worse, resort to mere platitudes that appear to be copied out of some dreadful self-help manual.
Grr. Grr indeed.
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