Years ago I was in a laundromat and a young woman sitting beside me struck up a conversation. It was the usual topics of the day type of chat, somewhere during which something she said prompted me to probe a bit deeper and ask her something she clearly considered to be a bit personal. She pondered the question very briefly and then declared, " You're so analyzical!"
Because I didn't wish to insult her intelligence, and also because I loved the new word, I didn't correct her. I found it interesting then, and still do now, that the question I asked her then was fairly benign in nature, yet still tripped her guards. I surmised that she was unaccustomed to topics which probed any deeper than what was the top news item of the day, or what sort of washing detergent I preferred.
And she had me figured out despite! I am quite admittedly "analyzical." I am thouroughly interested in the human condition. I want to know how things work. And why. Everything is a fascination for me. I have anxiety attacks when I realize that I'll never have time to learn eveything I want to learn before I die. I use the information that I aquire for songs, stories...paintings, when I used to paint.
I use the information that I gather as learning tools to better understand myself and the people around me. I believe that the aquisition of any sort of knowledge is important, essential, even, to being human. I could have been a psychologist, a profiler, a forensic pathologist, except that my artistic nature precludes me from any field that requires a concerted academic effort on my part. I'm too interested in too many things to focus for too long on a single topic.
Unless that topic is music...but, that's for another discussion entirely.  I particularly want to know the inner workings of people whom I consider to rank among the most important in my life. I want to know what they think and what they feel..what are their desires, hopes, fears? What promotes joy for them, and what causes pain? I want to know so that I can be more efficient as a friend and advocate. I want to know where we connect and how. I want to have the background information necessary to give them full support in times of need, and to contribute to their happiness in whatever ways that I can.
This desire to know seems perfectly normal and appropriate to me. I have enough tact and respect to know what not to ask and where not to probe. And if I still cross that line, I am open to being corrected for it. I'm a good listener, because I am truly interested. I'm interesting, too, when the listener is someone else!  I can exist within the rhealm of the mundane and engage in small talk when that is what a situation warrants. I do tire of it rather quickly, though.
If we do not open up to each other, how can we know each other? If we do not know each other, how can we maintain interest? If we cannot maintain interest in one another, how can we connect...and why would we want to? Isn't connection the most fundamental part of the human collective? We have to matter to each other to matter to ourselves. We are hopelessly interdependent in this way. We can talk about the weather, sure. But sooner or later, shouldn't we be talking not just about whether it's going to snow today, but *why*?