Meme

Borrowed from shadadukal. My results on the Test your Vocabulary meme:

Here

Not bad for a 23 year old, native speaker. Heh. Only thing is, now I want to look up all those words I didn't know the meaning of. I need to spend some time with a dictionary, me-thinks ... *grins*

Random Babbling

I love listening to people talk about things they love. I just ... was randomly reminded of that, today. Lecturers, random passers-by, fans. Whoever. I love that ... that tone, that gleam in the eye, the way they're always looking at something internal as much as looking at you, the ... the delight. Passion. Whatever. I love that. I love seeing that.

I once spent forty minutes in the canteen at lunch listening to a complete stranger enthusiastically discuss ships of the 19th and 20th centuries. Ostensibly with me, in reality mostly with himself. Heh. I knew nothing about ships, beyond, you know, stem and stern, that ideally they float, and that you shouldn't poke holes in them with icebergs. Or torpedoes. I know more now (a surprising amount about medieval shipping, thanks to the dissertation), but I didn't then. And I ... kinda didn't need to. Pretty much all of what he was saying was going right over my head, and I was pulling random facts about WWII and technology out of the air in an attempt to keep my end up, or at least have a semi-intelligent question to ask when he paused for breath, but that ... That wasn't really the point. *smiles faintly*

The point was watching him gesture animatedly with a fork, grumble bitterly that so-and-so had this opinion and hmpf! What did he know? The point was watching him sketch the shapes of the ships in the air, mime a ships lantern for me so I could see the function better. The point was watching him earnestly and heartfeltedly attempt to show me, to tell me, how wonderous these things were to him. How happy they made him. I hadn't a half clue what he was saying, and to this day have no idea what it is about ships lanterns that should have delighted him so. That wasn't the point. The point was that they did, so obviously, delight him, and that was a wonderful thing to see.

I like listening to people talk about things they love. Even if they're things I'll never understand myself, even if they're things I look at and go sort of 'bduh?'. It doesn't matter what I think of the things themselves, doesn't matter if I understand or not. What matters is that these things are, for someone, wonderous. That ... I don't know. That there is joy in so many things, no matter how seemingly inconsequential or boring. That the world is more full of laughing than I can understand. *smiles, shakes head*

I'm a strange little sap, I know. But ... I like things that make people happy. I like to listen, and be granted a glimpse at what people love. Even if it's some completely random stranger who happens to share my table in a crowded canteen, and who can talk about lanterns for forty minutes. Heh. I don't ... don't always have time, or enough will to face people, but when those moments do come, and I'm in the right frame of mind to appreciate them ... *smiles* There's something wonderful about it.