Taking an Interest in Others...

Note. It can be noticeable when people take an interest in someone's life. Tonight I gave a ride home to a co-worker, and she asked me about Malaysia (perhaps specifically). Interesting. I told her about how I felt Cameron Highlands was one of the most beautiful places, and about an interaction we had interacting with a random family on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. I told her about this picture you can see in this blogpost. A picture of diversity. I told her about how a picture was taken of a Muslim woman and I, and that I was supposed to send a copy to her (or was I supposed to write to her?) but never did. I could have told her about how my travelmates and I had followed an Asli man to his home in a jungle.

Most people don't ask me about my past travels. Perhaps they don't all know. It's possible I may be asked about Japan from time to time. It seems to be common for people to not actively take an interest in asking about people's travel stories or in seeing pictures. My co-worker went on to tell me about how she hosted a couple of parties so that she could share about Japan. The attendance was low at one. But she mentioned that someone asked about how her parties went, or something, and then told her that she (my co-worker) had asked to see her pictures when coming back from somewhere. I think something about this experience made her understand the power of words.

Might be a good thing that I'm not often asked to share stories, though, because I don't have a story-teller's heart, as you might be able to tell by my insecure parenthetical insertions and style of writing. I'd do better if I felt free to adlib.