Quality

[rinue]

Ciro and I were talking about our respective relationships with Ed and Val, and it occurred to me that the quality that makes a best friend is that they assume you know what you're talking about and work forward from there instead of questioning your data.

Comments

Attentiveness

[movingfinger]

Yes! yes, yes, yes.

Another quality, possibly a corollary, is a willingness to listen without demanding context because they can fill that in from what you've said in the past! Following leaps from one subject to another, as they come.


That said, I do have a friend who occasionally speaks in such oblique and cryptic terms that I absolutely must pull her up short and demand context because otherwise I just won't know what we're discussing.

[That said, I am always glad to have my friends question my data and context because I am such an unreliable witness, even unto myself...]

[movingfinger]

You know, this is also an important quality in certain kinds of teaching. I just looked over at a project and thought, Yes, the teacher I had for that was like that. Took as a given that what the student wanted to do was a good and reasonable thing and offered assistance and training to help carry it out.