Interesting Interests

“Hi, I am Joel, and I work as …”

I think there’s a lot of ways to introduce ourselves, and one early trick I learnt from my wife was not to ask someone what we do, what our occupation is. So I started the crazy journey of talking with people without asking what their jobs are.

We are so often tied to what we do. I assume many times that when I ask someone what they do, I’ll have a really good answer found some time after that. It’s really not true though. I have some friends who are food lab technicians, but I met them at a J-Pop concert, where the occupation was the last thing on our minds. All we talked about was how awesome the performance was.

On the other hand, I have some friends who I’ve only known for their day jobs as a doctor, or as a lawyer. And they might have a really sick sneaker collection.

But neither the interests, nor the occupation makes them that person. They are who they are, because of a lot of other reasons too. and that’s really something that we need to remember about the people around us.

It’s not their interests, its not their occupations, and honestly, it’s also not their opinions that make us friends with them. We just like people who we like, no matter how crazy they are.


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