October 13
Man's activity can all too easily grow slack, / he soon comes to love unbroken rest; / and so I gladly give him the companion / who goads and stirs and, as a devil, must create.
Faust, Part One (Prologue in Heaven)
Listening mode
Man's activity can all too easily grow slack, / he soon comes to love unbroken rest; / and so I gladly give him the companion / who goads and stirs and, as a devil, must create.
A conversation in which every sentence you say meets with agreement can become boring surprisingly quickly. You don't have to explain anything more precisely, take any exception into account, improve any wording. Your thoughts come back to you unchanged.
With someone who contradicts you, it's different. Perhaps you're annoyed at first. Then you find a reason that wasn't clear even to you before, or notice that a particularly confident claim rests on thin grounds. Something emerges that you wouldn't have thought in quite that way on your own.
The other person has to listen too, though. Mere opposition makes no thought more agile. The interesting conversation begins where both risk an answer after which they don't yet know their next sentence.
