Chapter 8

When and How to Talk of One’s Self

The person who talks unwisely about others may commit the greater sin, but the one who talks unwisely about himself makes the greater fool of himself. The gift of tongue holds no greater temptation than that of slyly glorifying one's self, and no surer way of achieving contempt. Few are able to evade this temptation altogether; for many it is the besetting fault of their talk.

The fact is, as was pointed out earlier, that people talk to give themselves satisfaction. God, however, arranged things so that they cannot give themselves this satisfaction unless in talking they seek first the pleasure of their hearers. But the natural man has the irrepressible urge in talking to gratify himself above everybody and everything else. That is why some have cynically called all conversation mankind's peacock-tail of self-glorification. Mortimer J. Adler says, "Many people think a conversation is an occasion for personal aggrandizement."

All this means that a wise person will continually watch and pray against letting this urge to self-glorification slip into his talking. The passion to find sly opportunities of patting one's self on the back is ever lying in wait for its chance. Voltaire rightly says, "Self-love is the instrument of our preservation; it resembles the provision for the perpetuity of mankind: — it is necessary, it is dear to us, it gives us pleasure, and we must conceal it." That is the essential requirement regarding ourselves in conversation, we must conceal our self-love.

All culture, all salvation even, proceeds from the control, the regulation, or the sublimation of our natural urges. Self is to everyone the supremely interesting topic of conversation. A person cannot get away from it, and he may not give in to it: he must sublimate it. He must somehow make what interests the "self" of others become his own self-interest. Just as a person truly in love honestly rather talks to the loved one about her than about himself, so the truly Christian and cultured conversationalist must ever strive to make others' interests his own, and their glory, his glory.

Even without full Christian perfection, a good conversationalist can learn to "conceal his self-love" enough to do no harm. His greatest help will be in knowing when and how talking of self is legitimate and desirable, and when it is not. Bacon says categorically, "Speech of man's self ought to be seldom, and well chosen." That is exactly true. One never ought to indulge in it before thinking twice as to whether the time is apt. But Bacon's considered advice does encouragingly imply that one may at times do so, and possibly should.

There are three types of self-talk which are proper. But they are proper only at restricted times and places. In the order of restriction, the first is one's innermost hopes and fears; the second is one's philosophy of life — one's political and religious views; the third is personalia, that is, impersonal chitchat about one's habits, routine, and experiences, comments on indifferent matters about ourselves.

The urge and need now and then to confide our innermost fears and hopes is great in every human being. Perhaps much of what is called mother love is the confiding to one's mother of one's secret aspirations, fears, ambitions, and hopes. It includes the prideful account of one's successes — in school, among playmates, in one's profession. Unlucky is the person who does not have one trusted friend to whom he can unblushingly confide what he really feels.

But there are a few qualifications to be made. They say that even with his trusted friend a self-reliant, cultured person will maintain a certain reserve, a reserve of good taste, and also of good sense. Before revealing any very intimate matter you might well ponder the wisdom of it. It would seem that no friend should ever know one's feelings and realities of guilt as fully, for example, as one's confessor.

As a criterion it might be said that the most intimate revelations should be reserved for the confessor or the psychiatrist, that all intimate conversation between trusted friends should begin or stop a full degree above that. Another rule might be that a person should not confide as fully in any friend as he does in his diary. With these reservations everyone should certainly share his inner feelings, hopes and doubts, ambitions and dreams with someone — a friend, a parent, a brother or sister, wife or husband. I would add that it is good for married people to have each, in addition to their mate, one confidential friend in whom they can confide among other things some of their marital joys and sorrows. This seems to me to constitute a kind of insurance against someday confiding them to a divorce judge.

All this matter of confidential friends must not be a formal matter, as if it were a public contract. Nor should one have several totally confidential friends. One may, however, have as many as four or five persons in the world with each of whom one shares some particular category of intimacy. One's wife or girl friend could well be a man's chief confidant in all matters pertaining to his job, his business associates, his economic prospects, but a former schoolmate might better be the recipient of his feeling about the days gone by, including the "girls he used to know." He will have feelings about those matters —as long as he is a human being he will retain these — and, given a certain temperament, it may be well for him to have someone special with whom to talk about them.

It has been my observation that the more many-sided a person is, the more fully developed, the more he is likely to have almost compartmentalized friends. He will seem to have different friends, as it were, for different occasions or different interests. Sometimes these hardly know one another — and are often surprised and even shocked when they finally meet as mutual friends of this friend.

One can say definitely that one's innermost feelings must be reserved for only a very few intimates, perhaps three or four. Even of those each should be reserved to confide in only one particular aspect of life. Furthermore, we can share our inner feelings with someone who does not necessarily tell us his, but merely hears and sympathizes with ours. A mutual exchange of confidences is neither necessary nor always desirable. As a corrollary, since every human being needs someone willing to accept our confidence, each of us should be willing to accept someone else's troubles.

The greater or finer or nobler a person is, the less will he need to tell his private troubles to others. The more such a refined person tends to keep his innermost thoughts to himself, the more others will seek him for advice on their problems, and he will accept their confidences. A father confessor is the supreme example of this. A mother, too, hears the troubles of all her children, but does not tell them hers. She reserves them for her own mother or for her husband. A cultivated conversationalist will, in the colloquial phrase, tend to let many cry on his shoulders, but cry on few himself, and seldom.

A certain rule about self-talk is that inner feelings and private problems may not be confided to a whole company or to strangers. One might suppose that no one would think of telling his personal problems to a stranger. But the curious fact is that the yearning for a safe and harmless confidant is so strong in human beings that many do precisely unburden themselves to strangers. When people travel, for example, an uncontrollable urge seems to force them into telling any sympathetic stranger beside them their intimate family history — even to a dolorous account of the quarrels they have with their wife or husband.

In general the following topics are too personal to share either with a company or with a stranger: ailments associated with unexposed parts of the body, nonobvious sins and vices, personal romantic and sex matters, details of one's salary and bank account, one's imagined complexes, competitive comparisons of one's self with others in matters of looks, intelligence, and prospects. In short, a person may tell his intimate friend, but not a party of friends, that his kidney is ailing, that he got drunk Saturday night, that his wife threatens to go back to her mother, that he has a new girl friend whom he kissed good-night, that he is now making $32.76 a week, that he believes himself stronger or brighter than anyone on his street, or that he fears he is developing an Oedipus Complex.

To talk about these things may possibly interest the party, as a diary would, but it will lower their esteem for the speaker. If a person does it often he will become ludicrous and come to be regarded as a cheap personality, lacking in self-respect and pride. If anyone in a group talks such intimacies, a good conversationalist will charitably try to distract the group from the full effect of the self-revealings, perhaps pass them off as a joke, and smoothly shift the conversation. The easiest way to do it is to raise the specific revelation to a higher generalized level. Were one to say, "I am getting $32.76 a week now," you might say, "It seems to me that wages in general have been affected by unionism. Do you think your raise was due to your union?" Then the talk could drift to labor unions, wages, and living costs, away from individual salaries. Were someone to say that he has just acquired a new girl friend, you might raise matters from the personal to the general level by saying, "A new girl friend? Isn't it odd how many new dates many people need before they find the one for life? Why can some find the right one the first thing, while others can do so only after years of flitting about?"

So much for innermost feelings, properly reserved for intimates, and avoided in company. The second type of personal conversation is one's philosophy of life, one's religious and political opinions. These are an important and large sector of mankind's total talk, and ought to be one's topic much and often. But a person should not thrust his philosophy of life in the face of new acquaintances. The purpose of conversation between close friends is to relieve each other's minds, but between newly-mets it is to become acquainted, to learn to know and trust each other. Therefore,  among new acquaintances,  the  talk ought  to cautiously explore areas of agreement, not run head on into the walls of disagreement. It is true, of course, that you do not know a person until you know his philosophy of life — his religion, his politics, his economics. It is also true that you not only want to know it, but you also want to affect it, perhaps bring it into harmony with your own. But you cannot do this until he has known you for a little while and come to trust and like you.

In the final analysis, "selling" one's philosophy of life is really the prize around which all high-class conversation revolves. That is what those conversations were of which we read in Boswell's Life of Johnson and in Eckermann's Conversations of Goethe and even in the Acts of the Apostles. Seeing the truth about life and wanting to share it with others is a much nobler aim than wanting to "cry on someone's shoulder." It is much finer than wanting to share one's personal troubles with others. It is really the highest aim of conversation, possibly the purpose for which God ordained it. It is this function that makes conversation an oceanic filter plant for the truth. When we try to win people over to our philosophy of life, we do our ideological duty by our fellow men. If each man does his duty well, one has to assume that truth will come off the victor.

But because a man's philosophy is so important to him, it is also a touchy thing, more or less a controversial one. His may not rashly be questioned; yours may not rashly be thrust at him. It is therefore indiscreet, when visiting one's prospective in-laws for the first time, to make such statements as: "I believe in the gold standard"; "Labor unions are the hope of the world"; "For me there is only one party, the Republican"; or, "Peacetime conscription is simply European militarism brought over here." A person needs to be especially careful not to obtrude his basic opinions when he is making the acquaintance of people whose friendship he wants or whom he is likely to meet often. In-laws, for example, are obviously people whose friendship he will try to secure before he should try to win them to his ideas. He will not display his philosophy to his new associates in a new position or in a new club. He will also be very cautious in advancing his pet ideas in any party or gathering which consists more of recent acquaintances than of well-tried friends.

Paradoxically, one may advance one's philosophy to complete and casual strangers more properly than to partial acquaintances. The smoking car of trains is the proverbial academy where personal philosophies are thrown about enthusiastically among complete and casual strangers. Whereas you should not tell a chance traveling companion what is in your heart, you may well tell him what is in your head. The Apostles approached strangers quite directly with their Gospel. Someone you meet casually need not come to like you. But he and you may learn from each other if you get into a political or religious discussion. Naturally, what was previously said about tact and courtesy you will obviously also scrupulously observe with strangers.

The most important point about revealing one's philosophy of life is that a person may and should do so among his friends and the people he knows well. After people know you for your basic characteristics they will not think you a crackpot if you express ideas which are new or disagreeable to them. Among his friends a person is quite entitled to say, "As for me, the more I read about war the more I am a pacifist" or "It seems to me all this planned economy, even rent control, is a half brother to communism."

When a group reaches the level where it can spiritedly and many-sidedly, yet amicably, discuss ideas and theories, such as those, then it is ready for really worth-while conversation. Every person should promote this sort of thing. While in some circles this may not be practicable in months, yet in others, if the earlier talk has been exploratory enough, it may interestingly be done after a group has been together for an hour or two. In a truly successful conversation the talk should gradually rise up until it is in the realm of ideas. In that realm each person at the start thinks his ideas are the right ones. But a cultivated conversationalist will also be prepared to modify his ideas in the light of the facts and ideas and evidence presented by the group. He will advance his own ideas, too, in the hope of winning the others to them — or of being persuaded by adequate data to reshape them to theirs.

Until we know people's background well enough to feel safe in telling them our philosophy of life, our opinions and ideas, the third type of talk about self is in place. We have given it the name of personalia. This includes those things about ourself which, while they reveal our personalities, are yet impersonal and indifferent enough not to seem private or confessional. People come together to know each other better. Therefore, if no one said anything about himself, the meeting would fail in the first purpose of conversation. Each has to contribute a bit of himself to the mutual self-knowledge. Happily there are thousands of interesting but "safe" things about ourselves we can tell people. The only precaution needed is not to dwell on them after the crowd knows them or is ready to pass from personalities to ideas.

The perfect time to talk about these indifferently personal matters is at the beginning of a party when people are still groping for something to say. That is where you as a good conversationalist will step into the threatening silence with accounts of the food problems you had that day, the transportation difficulties you encountered, how your husband or children delayed you or rushed you or disappointed you in this or that minor way. You may even describe any of your personal ailments affecting visible parts of the body, such as a headache or sinus trouble or swollen ankle or a rheumatic elbow. Doing this will make people feel that they are coming to know you a great deal better. Through these personalia, they are slowly conditioned for your philosophy of life, for things really significant. But there is a further value. Inasmuch as these impersonal personal topics, as it were, concern matters about which even the bashful can and would like to talk with reference to themselves, you will quickly set the whole group talking. Thus they will give each other those preliminary introductions to their personalities which are necessary bases for more lasting friendship — and for more significant conversation later on.

The ruin of conversation is continuing to talk about one's indifferent personal problems after the group is ready to advance to more generalized impersonal things. Even worse is depressing it to personalia from a higher level. It is the habit of some people, when a general topic is discussed, to take it personally, and so to drag the topic from its general level to one of personalities — in which they relate their personal experience. An extreme case is that of the fellow who generalizingly said that life consists of people who wait and those who are waited for, corresponding roughly to those who love and those who are being loved. Thereupon his betrothed, instead of discussing this general proposition, said, "Well, tonight you called on me late — I was waiting. The same thing happened last week. I take it, therefore, that you do not love me!" In this way, the conversation was ruined. It may well be that the hat fit, but one does not have to wear in public every hat that fits. In conversation at least, one may not drag a general statement down to a personal problem — one may not publicly apply it personally. Let the rule be, keep the conversation general in theme, impersonal in instance and detail. Do not drag it back to the personal, once it has been raised above it.

In all three types of talking of one's self, the ever lurking imp in the ego is that of slyly insinuating a few deft pats on one's own back. This is the most pitiful sin of conversation. It is also a continuous temptation even to fine people. It is as persistent as original sin. Too few resist it well. It is the bad taste of much conversation. The more sly it is, the worse it tastes. The outright boast can be answered with a witticism. The sly pat on one's own back can only be swallowed with pity by those who love us, with contempt by those who don't.

A common device of those who are less clever is to apologize for their self-praise with the weak, "even if I do say so myself." A person should think twice before saying anything good about himself for which that apology seems to be needed. If a person feels that it needs to be added, he had better not inflict upon others that which an old proverb declares to be odorous. "Eigenlob stinkt" — "Self-praise smells," say the Germans. Sometimes I have had my stomach turn dangerously as some otherwise respectable lady would tell us with a straight face, that, as she went shopping with her college-age daughter, the clerk said, "I see you are sisters." Another says, "Whenever we eat out, my husband says to our son John, 'They just can't put the personality into it that mother can, eh, John?' " A third says, less slyly, "I may not be able to do anything else, but I do keep my house spic and span." A man says, "My boss always says to me, 'Done already, John? How do you manage to do it?' " Regarding all such types of self-praise I would quote Hamlet's remark to the players: "Pray you, avoid it."

A particularly pitiful type of self-praise runs to the moral. In a way it is a tribute to virtue that everyone wants to advertise himself as charitable, generous, honest, and fair, even though few in reality seem to shine in it except in talk. Hearing people talk one might be led to believe that none of them has ever passed a beggar without giving a quarter, that all send mass stipends to missionaries, that they go around hoping to be given too much change by the drugstore clerk so they can flourishingly give it back, and that none of them ever loafed on the boss's time. The way they pat themselves on the moral back is usually by way of criticizing someone else. They say, "The paper boy has been around six times next door to collect for the paper. They always put him off saying they just happen to be out of change. It doesn't seem right. In our house tradesmen come first, and luxuries later. Why, the other day when my husband wanted to buy cigars with the money set aside for the paper boy, I said, 'John, how can you think of such a thing? You know the paper boy comes first.' " Here, under the cloak of morality, two minor sins are accomplished: a little deft detraction, and a good bit of sly self-praise. Both are utterly distasteful. One cannot insist too strongly that all sly self-praise, and most especially that which implies a detraction of someone else, be rigorously avoided.

When a person feels that he just has to commend himself for something or other —as is sometimes quite right— he ought to do it in one of two frank and open ways. The first way is to say so simply and openly, just as our Lord openly and frankly said, "I am the way, the truth, and the light." A person can simply say, "I rate myself as about as good a cook as one can find among amateurs" or "When it comes to lying I am a Quaker, I refuse to tell lies even to help my friends." Then, people can either accept the statement frankly or question it or twit about it. And nobody needs to feel queasy or embarrassed.

The other way is to say it with a smile. For most urges to self-praise, this is perhaps the safest and most desirable course. The humor of it can perhaps be got across by some obvious exaggeration. If a girl says, "Why, there is no doubt in my mind at all that I am the best dancer of all the girls in Blimpton Street," everybody is invited to dispute it with her, yet carry away the true notion that she can dance quite well. A mother can say, "1 know, of course, that everybody else's children are little imps, but mine, naturally, are different — what with my training, they couldn't but be little angels." Such a statement will not embarrass, but genuinely amuse. The boasting with a smile shows that one recognizes the vanity in it, and instead of trying to palm off some boast as not a boast, we in a manner atone for our self-praise by inviting the company's teasing. This, if done with the always necessary common sense and good taste, is not only a proper but a desirable mode in conversation. It can convert the urge to self-glorification into a considerable conversational asset.

How a person talks about himself and what he says is a more direct index to the type of character and personality he has than any one other thing. Talking of one's self always requires sense and judgment. A person will reserve private matters for confidential friends, and his ideas for people he knows well enough to infer theirs. He will talk about himself in impersonal matters only enough to encourage others to do likewise and to offer a springboard for more significant topics. But above all he will not go around slyly insinuating self-glorification into his anecdotes.

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