A 2012 study by Harvard neuroscientists found that people often took more pleasure from sharing information about themselves than from receiving money. The Belgian psychologist Bernard RimĆ© found that people feel especially compelled to talk about negative experiences. The more negative the experience was, the more they want to talk about it. Over the course of my career as a journalist I, too, have found that if you respectfully ask people about themselves, they will answer with a candor that takes your breath away. Studs Terkel was a journalist who collected oral histories over his long career in Chicago. Heād ask people big questions and then sit back and let their answers unfold. āListen, listen, listen, listen, and if you do, people will talk,ā he once observed. āThey always talk. Why? Because no one has ever listened to them before in all their lives.
Perhaps theyāve not ever even listened to themselves.ā Each person is a mystery. And when you are surrounded by mysteries, as the saying goes, itās best to live life in the form of a question.