People Want To Talk By Linda Stowe

People Want To Talk By Linda Stowe

I have followed Walter Isaacson for years. You may have seen a clip of Isaacson interviewing some well-known figure on your local public TV station. But don’t shrug this guy off as a mere interviewer. He’s a lion among reporters and authors. Isaacson is best known for his insightful biographies ranging from Benjamin Franklin to Henry Kissinger to Steve Jobs. He was also President of CNN and the Aspen Institute. Currently Isaacson is a professor of history at Tulane University.

Isaacson has done it all. In an account of his first reporting job, he describes his editor sending him out to interview a family who had just lost a child in a horrible accident. Isaacson naturally balked at intruding on these people at their time of grief. Then his editor said something that impacted Isaacson’s entire career: “People want to talk.” And, indeed, the family did want to talk about the child they had lost. Years later, Isaacson again saw this need to talk when he interviewed Woody Allen about his well-publicized relationship with Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn. Woody Allen was waiting for someone to let him tell his story.

I’ve found this approach to learning more about others to be true. Over the years people have told me some remarkably personal things, and I didn’t even have to buy them a drink (the poor man’s truth serum). All I had to do was listen. We all need that, someone to listen.

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For me, it depends on the moment. Maybe I wasn’t always this way. But these days, I’d rather not talk. Not most of the time. Oh. Sure. There are occasions when I definitely have something to say. And in those minutes it almost feels “necessary” for me to speak. But it isn’t often.

Perhaps Mary would tell a different story about me.  But our time together is much different than any other time that I spend with family, friends, or others. I talk more with her than anyone else in my life. My entire life.

It is a curious subject to me. As is listening. It is important to listen. And most of the time, I do it willingly. But again. There are moments when I just don’t feel like listening to a “particular” someone. Maybe it’s just me. But in honesty, it happens.

I realize the importance of both.  Talking and listening.  And yet. There is a lot to be said for being silent. It is when we are silent that we are able to notice.