How not to be boring

I’ve finished a few interesting books of late, which I should blog about sometime like ye olde days. One of those books was called On Being Nice, by the The School of Life. This was a good deal more interesting than the title might suggest, and begins with investigation into, and history of, why ‘nice’ is currently so unfashionable, before rising to its defense, in its truest form. As always one reads such things with a Christian filter in place, but here is a little portion I liked from a chapter on How Not to Be Boring. I concur. Few things will snag attention so much as someone being candid and honest about their personal experience of life:

Just as there is no such thing as a boring riverbank, tree or dandelion, so too there can be no such thing as an inherently boring person. The human animal witnessed in its essence, with honesty and without artifice, is always interesting. When we call a person boring, we are just pointing to someone who has not had the courage or concentration to tell us what it is like to be them. By contrast, we invariably prove compelling when we succeed in saying how and what we truly desire, envy, regret, mourn and dream. Anyone who faithfully captures the real data on what it is like to exist is guaranteed to have material with which to captivate others. The interesting person isn’t someone to whom obviously and outwardly interesting things have happened – someone who has travelled the world, met important dignitaries or been present at large geo-political events. Nor is it someone who speaks in learned terms about the weighty themes of culture, history or science. They are someone who has grown into an attentive, self-aware listener and a reliably honest correspondent of the tremors of their own mind and heart, and who can thereby give us faithful accounts of the pathos, drama and strangeness of being alive.

And how pretty are blueberry bushes in flower? I had no idea, till a friend who left town gave me this one.