The interested

Note: This is the second post in the “How To Be Interesting” series. Read the previous installment here.

As a said in my last post, to be interesting, be interested.

Why is that true?

Let’s run through a few interesting people…

1) Jonathan: mighty warrior, King David’s best friend, warned David to leave Saul’s house so Saul couldn’t kill David (1 Samuel 14, 20)
2) Corrie ten Boom: hid Jews in a secret room in her house during the Holocaust, forgave her guards in the concentration camps where her sister and father died (if you haven’t read her books, start with the The Hiding Place)
3) Elvis Presley: the undisputed king of Rock and Roll, still a best-selling entertainer more than decades after his death

These examples and most anyone else who’s interesting have one characteristic in common. They were (or are) all interested.

Jonathan was interested in helping David escape, Corrie ten Boom was interested in helping Jews hide from Nazis, and Elvis was interested in entertaining crowds of people.

Even people who weren’t ‘nice’ (understatement of the day) can be interesting:

1) Delilah: tricked Samson into cutting his hair then betrayed him to his enemies, the Philistines (Judges 16)
2) Adolph Hitler: leader of the Nazi party, responsible for the death of 43 million people during his World War II genocide
3) Herod the Great: massacred all baby boys in Bethlehem under the age of two because he was afraid one of them would be the messiah and take his throne (Matthew 2)

Now imagine each of these people I’ve listed in a setting by themselves. They live in this world, but they don’t interact with anyone. Would they still be interesting?

Even an artist like Picasso has to display his art so everyone can see it. He does this because he’s interested in people. He wants to give them something. It might be for selfish reasons. He might want to display his art so he’ll become popular. But still, he’s interested in offering something.

The thing is, if you’re only interested in yourself, it doesn’t matter what you do…

No one cares.

In the U.S., many of us have a belief that if an action doesn’t affect anyone else we should be allowed to do it. For example, if a guy wants to watch porn all day, as long as the studies show that it won’t make him violent toward others, it’s fine. No one cares if it doesn’t affect anyone else.

To be interesting then, you have to affect people. You have to make a different. To affect people, you have to be interested them.

This is in stark contrast to what I talked about before. Usually we think we need to be different to be interesting. What makes us interesting, however, is that we make others different.

If you’re different, why should anyone care? Great, you’re living the high life. You stand out. You’re popular and so on.

The rest of the world doesn’t care about that. The world only notices when you make them stand out. When you make someone else stand out, that person will be interested in you. When you make a difference for someone, you will be noticed.

A story…

About a week ago, I went blog hunting. I’m not sure what motivated me to start, but start I did. I googled some keywords and then clicked deep into the search results. Somewhere around the twelfth or thirteenth page, I found a blog that didn’t have any comments on the more recent posts. So I commented.

Later the blogger commented back, and now it’s turned into a conversation – all initiated by being interested. (You can check out Jil’s blog here. Lately, she’s been running an interesting study of Job.)

I’m not trying to brag about how interesting I am. On the contrary, this helped me learn that apart from being interested, I don’t need to be particularly novel to be interesting.

The same applies to you. Being interested by itself is enough to be interesting. While everyone is different and most try to stand out, not many are interested in others.

Being interested requires a shift from a self-focused perspective to an others-focused perspective. In the next post, I’ll explain how to make that shift to become interested. Be sure to come back and read it.

Until then, remember:

“To be interesting, be interested.”

If you remember nothing else from this series, remember that.

The ultimate example of ‘interestedness’ is Jesus. How interesting is He? Why?

Serving Suggestions

(1) Be interested in other people. Think of some ways you could do this. In the coming posts, I’m going to outline how to do this practically, but what are your ideas?

(2) Okay, now try them.

Note: Be sure to read the next post or check out the entire series.