What advice do you and your wife give your children?
Nigella’s mum gave her an invaluable insight into nice behaviour. According to Nigella her advice went something like this: ‘It is better to be charmed than to charm.’ By this she meant that what makes people feel good about themselves is feeling as if they have been charming, interesting; in short, have been listened to.
For her, the notion that one should oneself be riveting or aim to be quite the most fascinating person in the room was a vulgarity and just sheer, misplaced vanity. Trying to be charming is self-indulgent; allowing oneself to be charmed is simply good manners.
- Charles Saatchi, art collector, advertising heavyweight, husband of Nigella Lawson
I am sure Saatchi has stepped into some bad stuff, kicked the shit onto the innocent, and had a dozen anonymous helpers shine the mess clean, all while he took a piss, auctions catalog in hand. That said! In reading My Name is Charles Saatchi and I Am an Artoholic, I’ve found myself agreeing and relating to his answers a lot. Like, a lot.
I so often - particularly when with my family as a collective - find myself comforted by my own silence. Partially, this is habit. Being so much younger, I was always more silent because I did not understand the conversation. But now that I am able to maintain pace (although, let’s face it, I am comparatively a dimwit appeased by the idea that my talents are in other things, like crocheting, maybe), I still prefer listening. I am engaged insofar as I ask questions and smile and allow them to know they are being listened to. It seems this is how it ought to be, although I think my family believes I’m much more pensive and thoughtful than I probably am. Also, do not be fooled into thinking we gather around a Christmas tree atop an ivory tower; last night we sat around the dining table to see if any of us could flair our nostrils and smile simultaneously (it’s super hard!).
I am sensitive. So many of us are. Sometimes it is the fear of being wrong that keeps our tender intellects from wanting to share. But sensitivity is a feeling that is, to my perception, linked to pride. And it is pride that also makes one want to be the focus of attention at the risk of aggravating sensitivity. In sitting with my family, I thought it is a misconception to think that people are loud, or people blog, or people raise their hand in class, or people create, in order to be remembered, to create a legacy, to achieve a half-assed immortality. When people fight for scraps of silence into which to pour their own voices, it isn’t the desire to speak, but the want to be heard that motivates. We are, it seems, only seeking the acknowledgement of being listened to.
Which means “liking” someone’s blog post is enormously polite, isn’t it?
