Despite his efforts to promote the practice among his peers, he was largely ignored, ridiculed, and eventually pushed out of the medical community. He spent the latter part of his life in a mental institution, largely due to the frustration and misery caused by the rejection of his ideas.
I’m talking about Ignaz Semmelweis. The Hungarian physician who, in the mid-19th century, proposed the now widely accepted practice of handwashing to prevent the spread of disease in hospitals.
His brilliance wasn't appreciated in his time however.
He faced immense difficulty communicating his ideas to his peers and because of this disconnect, he eventually went crazy.
I don’t know about you, but I can relate to Semmelweis. I’m not saying I’m that brilliant or ahead of my time, but I do know how it feels to go crazy because people won’t listen to my ideas.
You’re not boring, you’re talking to the wrong people
When you have a real passion for something, it naturally fires you up. You can’t stop talking about it. You overflow with pure excitement.
But when other people don’t share your interest, that’s when things start to go sideways.
You know the feeling. You realize you’re rambling when their eyes glaze over and that familiar sinking feeling comes over you.
‘They don’t care at all about what I’m talking about.’
People might not say to your face that you’re boring them (unless they’re Dutch and very direct), but it’s heavily implied and you know the deal.
It’s probably best to retreat and try again next time, with some other innocent bystander.
It’s not that your ideas aren’t good, it’s that you don’t have the people around you to fulfill your rambling quota.
Your rambling quota
Oh you didn’t know?
Yes, you have a rambling quota.
To effectively think, humans need to talk, to ramble, to think out loud. A lot.
Sadly, ‘talking’ to ChatGPT isn’t enough. It’s essential that we talk to other humans.
If we’re not able to talk to people enough, we start talking to ourselves like a regular Gollum or we go crazy like Semmelweis did.
When you don’t hit your rambling quota on a regular basis, you have what is called ‘intellectual loneliness’.
Intellectual loneliness means not being able to regularly discuss the ideas that consume you with other people that are nerding out just as hard as you about those same ideas.
It will take some serious preparation, skill, and effort, but you can cure your intellectual loneliness. By being ready to enlist your favorite flavor of nerd when you encounter them in the wild.
Making sure you don’t end up in a mental institution.
Self-diagnose
People with significant others will recognize this situation instantly. Your partner lets out an audible sigh when you bring up your current pet topic.
‘Here we go, again…’ their eyes say.
It makes sense. They didn’t even want to hear about this the first time, let alone the seventy-third time. It’s not their fault. They have an entirely different set of passions they need to talk to people about, and chances are you’re not satisfying that need for them either.
We’re all intellectually lonely to some degree, even if you have a large number of friends. Here’s how you know if you have an advanced case:
You’re bursting with ideas, but nobody wants to hear them.
Your enthusiasm seldom lands and is never reciprocated.
You can literally see yourself getting tuned out in real time in people’s eyes
You find yourself talking for long stretches at a time only to be met with short responses like ‘cool’, ‘hmm’, or ‘interesting’.
People change the topic of conversation when you’re just getting started.
If this is you, you’re suffering from intellectual loneliness and you might want to start doing something about it.
Support their ramblings
“At the end of the day people won't remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel.” ― Maya Angelou
Actively looking for people is difficult and it tends not to work. Trying to meet new people feels weird and forced.
A better strategy is to be prepared to make the most of the random encounters you have with people anyway.
When you meet someone you like, you want to be able to connect with them in that moment.
Ready yourself for when a new relationship opportunity arrives at your door.
The likelihood of converting casual meetups into deeper connections goes up the better your conversation skills are.
Remember, they have a rambling quota too. By letting them think out loud with you and supporting them in their passionate ramblings, you 10x the chances of connecting.
You’ll be rambling together in no time.
True connection
When you start improving your conversations you’ll learn to build a life of contribution. Where your ideas are truly valued, no matter how weird, unusual, or mundane they are. You can nerd out about washing your hands before performing surgery, seeking the one true ring, you name it…
People with similar interests will seek you out for your ideas, your opinion, and to contribute to their projects.
As you develop your conversational skills, finding people to riff, brainstorm, and have deep conversations with will be easy for you.
You will be included in whatever tribe of nerds you want to be a part of. Because you’ll be able to convert anyone who seems interesting into a new tribe member.
The best part is you’ll do this not through cunning manipulation, but through real human connection.
Your next target
The next time you find yourself thinking ‘Now this is a person I’d like to meet with again’, try to implement one of these 3 strategies in conversation.
Shut your mouth whenever you can. I know this is hard but you have to give them the space to talk. Don’t interrupt, let their sentences ring out, and even wait a little after that so they can jump back in (and ramble on).
Reflect. Paraphrase what you hear them say. Making them feel heard goes a long way towards building a connection. You can keep this simple. Pick out one thing you heard and say something like: ‘It seems like [x] is important to you’. Off they go again.
Ask questions. Put your natural curiosity to work and ask them questions (preferably pertaining to the things they were just talking about). Be sure to give them the space to respond though.
I go a little bit deeper into each of these components here. Start practicing them, and cure your intellectual loneliness.
There’s no need to go crazy because people won’t listen to your ideas. By listening to them, they’ll be listening to you soon enough.
Love the idea of a rambling quota.
Reminds me of my rebuttal to the traditional management aphorism-“don't come to me with problems, come to me with solutions”-which is to say that one can't just come with solutions because we refine our ideas through discourse. We gotta ramble before we can rumble!
Rambling quota. ha ha. I love that. The equation of relationship. Listening + reflection + questions = increased rambling quota.