When I first meet someone, I like to ask lots of questions. I ask everything from the mundane (“What’s your favorite color?”) to the downright unexpected (“If you were a circus performer, what would you perform and why?”).
After a while, those questions branch into deeper questions.
- “What were you like in high school?”
- “What do you want to do within the next three years?”
- “What makes you cry?”
The deeper it goes, though, the harder it gets to ask good questions. I keep asking or at least trying to ask, but eventually the only things left to know are things the other person has to volunteer on their own. There aren’t any questions to get those answers out, or the questions are so obscure, it’s too difficult to come up with them.
At that point, you just have to talk, trusting that the other person cares about your response even though they never asked for it specifically.
