On Being Ordinary Here
Nearly everyone arrives determined to be unusual. It is the most predictable thing that happens, and I have watched it so many times that I could set my watch by the point in the evening at which a man begins to explain why he is not like the others.
He does it gently, usually. He is not boasting. He is anxious, and the anxiety has found a shape, and the shape is a small case for why his particular arrangement of wanting deserves closer attention than the general run of it. He has thought about this a great deal before arriving. He has an account of himself ready. And the account is always, without exception, a version of I understand this more deeply than most people who come to you.
I want to say something that will sound unkind and is not intended to be. He is right that he is not like the others, and he is wrong about why, and the reason he has prepared is never the reason that turns out to matter. What is particular about a man is almost never the thing he has selected as his distinguishing feature. It is something he has not noticed at all, because it is too close to him to see, and I usually find it within the first hour while he is still explaining the other thing.
There is also a practical problem with arriving as a case to be made. A man who is arguing cannot be attended to. He is too busy producing evidence. Every question I ask gets answered in the direction of the argument rather than the direction of the truth, and I end up with a well constructed portrait of a person who does not exist, assembled by someone standing directly in front of the person I wanted.
The ones who settle fastest are the ones who let themselves be ordinary here for a while. Not diminished. Ordinary, in the sense of not needing to be established. They arrive, they answer what they are asked, they do not manage my impression of them, and within a very short time something specific and quite unrepeatable begins to show, because it is no longer covered by the presentation.
And I would gently point out what the performance implies. If a man believes he must be remarkable to hold my attention, then he believes my attention is a prize awarded on merit, and that it could be lost by being insufficiently interesting on a given evening. That is an exhausting way to stand in a room. It also happens to be untrue. My attention is not a scarce reward being competed for. It is simply what I do, and I do it more accurately on someone who has stopped moving.
Being ordinary here is not being unimportant. It is putting down a piece of luggage that was never required, and that he has been carrying up several flights of stairs on the assumption that it would be checked at the door.
It is not checked at the door. Nothing here is. He can put it down whenever he likes, and I will still be looking at him, and I will finally be looking at the right thing.