Happy Listening

I have to admit that I'm not the best of listeners. I am prone to waiting impatiently for the other person to stop speaking so I can finally talk. Or barrel over them completely. Cough. 

Reading "Talk Less. Listen More" was educating. This segment jumped out at me: 

You also want to avoid asking people personal and appraising questions like “What do you do for a living?” or “What part of town do you live in?” or “What school did you go to?” or “Are you married?” This line of questioning is not an honest attempt to get to know who you’re talking to so much as rank them in the social hierarchy. It’s more like an interrogation and, as a former C.I.A. agent told me, interrogation will get you information, but it won’t be credible or reliable.

In social situations, peppering people with judgmental questions is likely to shift the conversation into a superficial, self-promoting elevator pitch. In other words, the kinds of conversations that make you want to leave the party early and rush home to your dog.

Instead, ask about people’s interests. Try to find out what excites or aggravates them — their daily pleasures or what keeps them up at night. Ask about the last movie they saw or for the story behind a piece of jewelry they’re wearing. Also good are expansive questions, such as, “If you could spend a month anywhere in the world, where would you go?”

I never liked being asked what I do, and so don't usually ask that question. Because what people do for money rarely has to do with who they are. 

It reminds me of an episode of "Will & Grace," where the two go to a wedding. Will is tired of the faces people make when he tells them he's a lawyer, so he lies and says he's a professional tennis player. Another guest says, "Hey, you must know this guy, he's a professional tennis player too!" Will is sweating, but the guy covers for him. 

Will thanks him, and asks what is it really like to be a professional tennis player? The guy says, "I've no idea. I work for the IRS. You know how people respond to that? It's like, 'Hello, I've just killed my family.'" 

You see? 

But Han pointed out that walked up to a stranger and asking about their hobbies right off the bat would be weird. True, it was once done to me and I thought that was a bit presumptuous. We have to be a bit chummier than that before I start spilling my personal beans. 

Yet if someone asked me something innocuous, like, "I'm on the search for a good book. Have you liked anything recently?" or "Isn't this salmon delicious? I wonder what they put on it. Do you like cooking at all? I'm impossible with fish." It's less interrogation, more chatty.

TGIF

• Short-term memory and age.

Learning Kindness

I'm wondering when I'll finally get over having been an "older single." I still identify as such, even though I officially left the moniker behind more than two years ago. 

I have recently been filled with feelings of . . . well, I'm not sure how to put it. 

I was single. I was dating for over a decade. Han showed up when he was supposed to show up. 

So, I could have spent those years feeling the way I wanted to feel, that Hashem has my man tucked away somewhere and when the time is right He'll produce him. In the meantime, therefore, I should simply be.  

But that wasn't allowed. Because whenever I tried to invoke Him, I was told, "No, you have to do your hishtadlus." Yet, what is hishtadlus? It means different things to different people. 

1. It means cold-calling "shadchanim." 

2. It means going out with every guy who's suggested. 

3. It means going to singles events. 

4. It means tackling every male within site and demanding marriage or else they will never draw breath again. 

When I executed as much "hishtadlus" that I felt comfortable with, and was still single, we moved on to other territory: What I must be doing wrong.  

I wish I could say I was confident enough to ignore the naysayers, but I wasn't. I would blog about it, listing proofs as to my normalcy, pleading with my audience to concur that I wasn't a freak, right?  

Either way, finding a spouse was on me: I wasn't doing enough hishtadlus and/or I was a nutter who cleaned her toes during a lobby date. 

I could have been more chillaxed in that time, instead of battling breathing-into-a-paper-bag anxiety. I could have seen my life as more than "pathetically single" and, perhaps, have utilized my time differently. Maybe I would have gotten into sourdough earlier. 

I'm doing that annoying 20/20 hindsight thing. Based on parental hopes alone, I would have still been a nervous wreck. But did others have to rub it in? To make me feel like you-know-what? 

Sigh. 

I suppose one thing I have certainly learned is that whenever that judgy inner voice starts piping that it's "their fault," I shut it down. Or try to, at least, which is more than I used to do before. I think I have become a kinder person after being subjected to wagging fingers for a decade. Everyone has their own burdens. Whether it's their fault or not is besides the point. 

So let's be kind.

Lessons from the Ancient

I have had a recent epiphany. 

I'm old. 

OK, not old old. Not ancient. Not quite the crypt keeper. 

But I'm certainly older than I used to be. 

I like dark chocolate. The type that's 72% cacao? That nasty stuff. Milk chocolate, the joy of my girlhood, is too sweet.

My lower back is something to be coddled and exercised. I wear a posture corrector so it doesn't go to pot while hauling a rather zaftig infant on my hip. 

My kinfauna are dating. (Do they seek my insights after my many, many years in the field? Of course not.) 

Despite my rigorous creaming program, smile lines are fighting back. 

I'm going to be 35 this year. I shouldn't be so surprised. 

I'm not upset by my revelation. It has made be contemplative. 

Should I be having a mini-mid-life crisis? Frankly, I'm too tired. Ben doesn't quite sleep through the night, and I'm too busy gazing at him in a I-can't-believe-this-squishy-baby-is-mine haze to care that my "best" years may be behind me. 

What was so "best" about them, anyway? 

I spent my 20s thrashing about the dating quagmire, and in the process found myself. I think I was on a bit of a time delay, and during those years I had the self-discovery and whatnot that established my identity. I like that. 

I like being sure of myself. Surer. Knowing what I am and what I need and who I want to be. 

So here's to my dark chocolate, creaky bones, and determined wrinkles. It's time to start aging with grace, with the self-assurance I finally found.