Student Blog: What Makes Us Magnetic

I’ve become fascinated by the word magnetic. Consider this a small word study in what makes us want to know someone better, and why knowing them better can make us want to know them more. I’m thinking of people whose thoughts I look forward to hearing, whose affection for something helps me understand its beauty. There is a pleasure in their company that becomes harder to separate from an appreciation for how they live and think. Charismatic might describe their manner, and memorable the impression they leave, but magnetic seems to reach beyond the encounter itself, into the lovely anticipation of all we haven’t yet had the chance to ask.

Maybe I’m thinking about this now because I’m approaching graduation, when so much of life involves explaining yourself while you’re still figuring yourself out. I’m introducing myself, describing my experience, and finding words for the future I’m still learning how to build. In the arts, we become familiar with fitting ourselves into limited space: a headshot, a résumé, a short biography, an answer to “Tell me about yourself.” There is skill in choosing what belongs in those few lines. I want them to feel like me. Still, I wonder what someone might come to know that I wouldn’t think to say about myself. Once they know what I study, where I’ve worked, and what I hope to do next, what will they learn in the time we spend together? What will make us want a little more of it?

The word magnetic interests me because it seems to say something about one person, yet holds something of both of us. We recognize it in our own desire to linger, in the feeling that there is still something we want to understand about the person beside us. Who draws us in will depend on what we’ve lived, what we love, and when we happen to meet, but perhaps part of the pull is the chance to see a little further through someone else’s eyes. Their affection for something brings us closer to it, until a part of the world we once passed over begins to mean something to us, too.

I notice how often we meet one another through summaries, as though reading a book’s table of contents could tell us what it would be like to read it. We might recognize the subjects and decide which chapters interest us, but we haven’t spent any time with the voice or discovered where it might change our minds. I wonder how much we miss when we let those first few details settle into everything we think someone is. Some of the people I find most magnetic have become dearer to me as I’ve come to understand things about them I wouldn’t have known to ask, through time together that gave my first impression room to grow. There is something especially lovely about hearing someone speak about what they know intimately, when their attention settles on a detail I would never have thought to notice. I get to understand a little of how they think, and sometimes, if we keep talking, how they came to think that way. What sounds assured today may have taken years to find words for, and the understanding they offer so freely may be something they once struggled to reach. I find tenderness in remembering that, in knowing how much effort can live beneath the ease we admire. We meet someone as they are that afternoon, with so little sense of all the days that brought them there.

That makes me curious about what I’m developing in myself. Where has my curiosity led me to an opinion of my own? Which interests have I continued to explore after the excitement of discovering them? What might I understand differently if I gave it more time? These questions leave room for many ways of being magnetic, and I like the possibility that becoming more engaging begins with paying closer attention to what we notice, enjoy, and believe. When we share those details, we give someone a place to meet us, something they can ask about or recognize in themselves. I’m beginning to think that having something to offer a conversation depends partly on how willing we are to let it change us. There is something generous about explaining how we came to believe something, allowing another person to hear the questions we had before we felt sure. That honesty invites them to offer their own perspective, giving us a chance to understand more than either of us could alone.

What moves me most about magnetic is that we give the word to one another. We can choose how we introduce ourselves, but we cannot always recognize what makes someone want to know us better. We are so familiar with our own ways of thinking that we may never imagine someone else could find something beautiful in them. There is a certain warmth in realizing that another person may appreciate something about us long before we learn to appreciate it ourselves. As I prepare for a season of explaining what I have to offer, I want to remember that I will never be the only person who can answer that question. I hope to tell people what I find compelling about them, to give them words for something they may have overlooked, and to believe them when they do the same for me. Perhaps the beauty of magnetic is that we cannot fully understand it by looking at ourselves, because some of what makes us worth knowing only becomes visible in the life of someone who is glad to know us.