Probing for the strong points

If we’re in conversation for the connection, we’ll never be bored.

What is failure in a social context? I think failing to connect with others is the most important sort of failure. Our job in any social conversation isn’t to force connection. Our job is to be ready for, and open to, connection happening.

So important and so neglected is this duty of probing for the strong point of others, which is naturally brought forward, in connection with the effort to talk with the young and inexperienced, that I am disposed to lay this down as a practical rule: if you find the company dull, blame yourself. With more skill and more patience on your part it is almost certain you would have found it agreeable. If even two or three people in a company acted on this rule, how seldom would our social meeting prove a failure!

~ JP Mahaffy, §47 The Principles of the Art of Conversation

Those are truly Victorian-style sentences. As I was reading, I was struck by the cut of that final sentence. As you begin reading that sentence, it seems it will be a rhetorical question; It seemed it would finish as a passive-aggressive attempt at education. But that final exclamation mark—literally the only one in the entire book—turns that sentence into a hopeful declaration of a path forward for connection.

If we’re in conversation for the connection, we’ll never be bored. Connection is never dull.

What is the difficult work you want to do?

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