Fascinate

Okay, so the other day I was at lunch with two of my friends, nothing special, just the same old story, same old song and dance. We were conversing about whatever came to mind, and my one friend told me that when I tell stories, I have great delivery. He said to me that he loves it every time I have something to say.

That's a pretty neat compliment. If I remember correctly, he told me to use that ability, because not many people have that.

Well I got to thinking, and I remembered a conversation I had with one of my other friends back in High School. I was among a group of friends, and we were having a "pow wow" as my one friend so adequately put it. Some pretty interesting topics came up during that conversation, and one of my friends actually told me that he thought my life was fascinating.

Fascinating! That's an awfully powerful word if you ask me. Think about what fascinates you. How many things can you even think of that legitimately fascinate you? Not many I bet. I, personally, can't think of a single thing at the moment. I mean sure, I can say that redheads fascinate me, and that video games fascinate me, but do I really mean that? I think it would be more accurate to say that those things interest me, rather than fascinate me.

Fascination is an overused word which has lost it's overall meaning, in my opinion. It's just like "awesome"; How often does something fill you with awe? Not often, yet we use that word all the time, and so it has lost it's meaning. I feel the same way about fascinate. Let's grab a definition:

fas⋅ci⋅nate

 –verb (used with object)

1.	to attract and hold attentively by a unique power, personal charm, unusual nature, or some other special quality; enthrall: a vivacity that fascinated the audience.

Back when my friend said that my life was fascinating, I kind of just scoffed at it. How on Earth could my life be fascinating? I never considered myself to be particularly interesting, to be perfectly honest. Nobody had ever said anything like that to me before, and I'm still not sure if I could consider my life to be fascinating, but now I have two people who are interested in my life and what I have to say - and those are only the people that I know of.

Am I really that interesting? Well if you read my blog, I guess you find me interesting, otherwise you wouldn't keep reading, right?

Well, maybe it has more to do with what my first friend said, about how I have great delivery with my stories. Maybe all it is, is the way I talk about my life. I speak in a way that others find appealing, and so they become enthralled and want to hear more. I guess that could be an accurate depiction.

Hmm... maybe the way you tell a story is more important than the story itself. I can see how that would be possible. You could have done something really cool, but if you're not passionate/involved in how you tell it, then some people probably wont be interested.

So then that would mean that all the people who live interesting lives, might not actually be that interesting, but they tell their stories in such a way that others are compelled to listen. The opposite could be true as well - Someone could be a very uninteresting person, but they could have experienced some of the coolest things in life.

Well, while that is all very plausible, I also believe that the people who are good at telling their stories are probably good at it for a reason. If you live an interesting life, it has probably forged you into the interesting person you are today. Did that make sense?

What I'm basically saying is that the people who are deemed to be interesting/fascinating probably have legitimate reasons for receiving that praise.

So then does that really mean that I'm fascinating? I'm just an ordinary guy in my book. I can't think of anything particularly special about me other than that I'm not afraid to think and feel. I can be charismatic at times, but not all the time. I don't get it =\

Maybe I'm better off not knowing why people find me interesting. If I did know, it might make me try too hard to get people interested in me, a quality that I wouldn't like to add to my repituar. Besides, I'm not one to try and impress people. If you're impressed with me, that's your decision to make, because I'm not going out of my way to impress anyone. I am what I am, and you can take it or leave it.

I've always preferred to let people create their own opinions of me, rather than have me try and tell you what I'm like. I act differently around different people, so technically, everyone experiences a different Matt. Wow, there's a thought. I guess I'm the only one who knows what I'm really like, and everyone else sees one of my many hats.

I like that. I like it a lot.

I guess that would make me chaotic in the sense that my personality is random. If I'm meeting a person for the first time, I don't know how I'm going to act towards you, because I act differently around different people. How very intriguing.

I'm going to ponder on this some more...

How do you honestly see me?

Don't sugar coat anything. I want the brutal, honest truth.

Stay frosty.