We start with an unusual observation: there is a huge variance in how much we feel we have to say for ourselves around some people compared to around others; certain people make us feel boring, others do not.
We tend to evaluate people on how interesting they are.
But we're thereby liable to miss a more acute and relevant issue: how interesting does a given person make us feel?
Why in the company of some people do our minds quickly fill with stories, while around others, we experience ourselves as blank, dull and close to inert.
Why — when some people ask — 'so what have you been up to lately?' do we positively brim with a multitude of topics, whereas with others, faced with the very same question, will struggle to remember that we have ever even existed?
To explain the phenomenon, we have to credit our unconscious minds with a faculty we might never have known we possessed.
Throughout our interactions with people, we are continually picking up on small clues as to how much our interlocutor is understanding and appreciating of what we are saying.
When we mention a given issue, how much do their eyes light up?
How much can they follow?
How much of our reality can this person accept; how much shocks them; how much can they take in their stride; how much of what is knotted and complex in us can they safely receive; how much of our reality would we need to hide from them to spare them — and therefore us — an alarmed or censorious response?
