it's normal to want to be a good guest
an intense wish to please tends to guide
us when we accept a dinner invitation or
spend a weekend with friends and we
generally fulfill this ambition by
following a leading theory of what
satisfies other humans we mimic our
hosts we follow their lead in a
conversation we discuss what they want
to discuss we eat when they want to eat
we are malleable we adjust we laugh at
pretty much anything they find funny it
sounds extremely generous and deeply
well intentioned but there's a strange
aspect to this theory the mimetic person
is not in practice especially pleasing
they may not be offensive but nor are
they particularly memorable interesting
or even likeable by contrast there is
another social type who's a great deal
more willing the person who expresses
their own distinctive needs with clarity
while nevertheless remaining at all
times gracious and socially vigilant
this more richly characterful person
will over dinner remark with a smile
that they happen to find the politician
everyone's meant to hate oddly
attractive at least in fantasy they tell
us about an embarrassing thing that
happened to them recently at work or
about a regret that haunts them in their
emotional lives when there are house
guests they inform us in a rather
precise though always highly polite way
when they'd like to go to sleep how much
time they need on their own and what
their bathroom requirements are they
apologize for being a bit mad in a way
that suggests profound sanity but they
add that they deeply appreciate a boiled
egg with biscuits for lunch they are in
the best way a bit peculiar it isn't
that the mimetic person harms us they
simply don't reassure or endear us a key
part of what we seek in social contact
is a feeling that our eccentricities and
less easily mentioned dimensions can
find an echo in another person and yet
all we see when we come closer to the
conformist guest is our own reflection
what truly charms is the
and who manages to possess both the
character and politeness the archetype
for this is the endearing four and a
half year old child this creature will
tell a near stranger their ideas about
where squirrels go at night what they
like to put in their sandwiches and
their nickname for their elderly
grandfather we colloquially call this
cute but it's perhaps something more
serious than this implies more pointedly
it's a relief from the customary
pressure to standardize human nature and
to say nothing that will ever sound too
odd or flavored the small child is
reminding us that the variegated surface
of every personality there's but by
implication ours as well could be put on
display and rather than hurt or offend
simply charm and enliven the good guests
combines the candor of the child with
the social empathy of the self-aware
adult they know how to be that rare and
much prized social phenomenon a lovable
eccentric there is a sad background to
the people pleasing adult who doesn't in
the end even please so much they're
generally the outcome of a style of
parenting that didn't allow character or
originality to show through they had to
hide who they really were for fear of
upsetting an angry or vulnerable set of
caregivers we cannot erase the past but
we can cease waging an active war on our
characters in public our true selves may
once have been unwanted but it's only on
the basis of being able to show them now
that proper friendships can begin being
merely polite is in the end an overly
low ambition
we have exaggerated how much people like
to be imitated and agreed with it's easy
to tolerate such types but very hard to
really love them to truly please people
requires that we dare to show a little
bit more of the touching weirdness that
lurks within us all
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