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March 29th, 2024

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The difference between being interesting and being interested

 Joseph Cramer, M.D.

By Joseph Cramer, M.D. Deseret News

Published Oct. 23, 2014

The difference between being interesting and being interested
Humans have agency. We have a choice between being interesting or being interested. The more interested a person is, the more interesting he or she will become.

The greater the differences between people, the more interesting they can be. But to know that, one has to be interested.

In the whole wide world, there is no person who is the same as another. This is especially true of so-called identical twins. They are not identical. True, they have the same gene sequences, and they shared the same womb for nine months. But they are not identical. They may enjoy the same flavor of ice cream, and while separated by many miles, they may both name their dogs Spot. This does not make them identical.

The only way to discover this difference is to be interested in others and in the world.

In math or science, when there is a difference, it is called a delta, after the Greek letter. The larger the delta, the greater the difference. The greater the difference, the more we can learn.

One difference that we can choose is whether we are interested or interesting. It doesn't mean you are only one or the other. One can be both interested and interesting. One often is. However, it is when two people meet that the delta appears. Which of these two characteristics will dominate the interchange?

Whatever the gap, it can always be bridged if someone is interested. To be interested in another person pushes away the variations in genes, dress or attitude.

For example, in spite of my dislike for tattoos, I asked a father about his. He proudly showed off his leg where his son had scrawled his name. Now the boy, who has progressively fatal muscular dystrophy, can't hold anything in his hands and can't lift his arms to write anything anywhere.

To be interested and not just interesting doesn't require an education at a fancy college or a career of fame. It doesn't demand wealth or a pedigree. In fact, at times, these things can make the job of being interested in others more difficult.

Multiple elements make a person interested: agency (courage), awareness (selflessness), attention (focus, time) and attunement (love).

We cannot be interested if we think we are only interesting. This self-awareness is necessary for the first step. To be interested, one has to embrace curiosity. To be curious requires attentiveness. One cannot be curious and mindless.

To confront the jungle of difference often demands courage. To be interested requires a squelching of fear of the unknown. We have to choose to be strong enough to approach someone totally different from us. This openness to learn without judgment is a definition of mindfulness. It means to perk up, step up, shut up and listen up.

However, even during our conversations with the familiar, we are standing on our tippy-toes, waiting to insert our comments. We have the best joke just waiting to be told. We possess the best example if we could only get a word in edgewise. We are just dying for the slightest pause in the action to jump in and share our important thoughts, our brilliant ideas and our grand solutions.

When we are afraid, an instinctive response for many is to become quiet. If you make no noise, the dragon won't know you are there. So we don't engage in conversation. We fail to ask about others. We are neither interested nor interesting. However, others combat nervousness with chatter. A person jabbers because they are physically uncomfortable. They compensate with their interesting stories but remain uninterested.

Therefore, to be interested, we must be courageous, be curious, be attentive and learn to love.

I thank Jane Fonda for introducing the idea. At the conclusion of her words of gratitude after she received the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award in June, she said, "It's much more important to be interested than to be interesting."

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Joseph Cramer, M.D., is a board-certified pediatrician, fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, practicing physician for 30 years and a hospitalist.

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