What Makes One Person Interesting to Another?

The most pragmatic answer - when someone needs something from another person... money, sex, recognition, attention, help... An extremely simple formula, but it is only now that I have grasped it so acutely.

It is rather like, paraphrasing Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - we are responsible for those whom we have not ordered in time.

Not to let oneself be used and yet remain interesting? Can a person who is not being used for the satisfaction of someone else's desires, whims, goals, and drives be considered interesting to that other person? Market psychology - letting oneself be used while gaining some benefit from it.

How does a person feel who is not preoccupied with the question of what impression their behaviour or words leave on those around them, who is not tormented by the thought - am I being used too much? Are there even such people who are free of prejudices about determining their own self-worth? While at the same time maintaining objectivity and not overestimating themselves.

In today's labour market there are many people with great ambitions but little ability, yet no fewer who, due to a sense of inadequacy, cannot prove themselves and simply wait for someone to place them in the spotlight.

Being interesting to someone is essentially about presenting yourself, demanding attention from those around you, without losing the fine boundary of decorum - which oscillates between pedantic observance of etiquette and vulgarity. Can a person today have value only as part of society? Only by affirming oneself, achieving certain results - that is, attracting and successfully exploiting the interest of those around you. Is it possible for a solitary individual in a foreign crowd to feel a sense of belonging, to feel interesting, to feel wanted?

If you want to be an interesting conversation partner, ask questions and listen attentively. Nothing preoccupies another person as much as their own personality. A truism, but its essence - you are being used again as a listener, an ear, a container for the pent-up, most often negative emotions. And in that moment you are interesting to that person. But is that person interesting to you?