Yes.
I have a friend who is extremely intelligent, endlessly curious and was raised in a locally well-established and notoriously generous and civic-minded family. So he was raised in that milieu of sincere kindness and generosity, and whenever he’s come across anything that interests him (which is seemingly something new every week) he seriously researches it until he understands it.
So it pretty much doesnt matter what the topic is - he knows something about it, but his personality has been shaped so that he’s attentive and considerate rather than pedantic and self-absorbed. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve seen him engage in obviously mutually enjoyable conversations with complete strangers over… pretty much anything.
I vacillate between thinking that it’s remarkable that he’s the way he is and that it’s remarkable, in a different sense, that that’s so uncommon.
Some of it might be age. I didn’t realize until recently what I wanted. Got a new co worker who’s only a couple years older than me (I’m 46) and after a few days of working with her, I told her she’s ruining my other friendships because I’ve realized how boring many of my friends are. She’s just very easy to talk to and we can cover tons of subjects. We always have something to talk about.
I don’t think you can expect someone in their 20s to really know enough about enough things to really be euradite about much. They also don’t have as much experience talking with people to be remarkably eloquent. That’s not to say that everyone younger than me isn’t worth talking to, but maybe you’re scouting in the farm league and don’t know it. Keep talking to everyone though: one day you’ll find someone you hope never stops talking to you.
I’ve met a few.
What I’ve noticed is they rarely use the words “I” and “me”. They rarely talk about themselves, which is bloody unusual. I try to follow that example.
This whole comment is a failure of that philosophy. My bad.
No
I’ve met tons of these people. I think it’s sad the rarity this question presupposes. People like this are all over the place.
While I do think you should keep an open mind, some people and conversations are definitely more interesting than others
In technical fields? All the time. It is super rare for someone to ignore your arguments or resort insulting you during a discussion.
Good for you if that’s your experience, but I cannot say the same. The difference I found is with the way those people ignore arguments and insult you.
I can talk to a person from a technical field and come out of that conversation feeling like shit because I was called all kinds of stupid indirectly.
