The School of Life: An Emotional Education

by The School of Life

What separates a cold from a warm person are not intentions. Both warm and cold characters may be equally full of goodwill and ache with an inward desire for closeness. At stake is a guess about what is going on in another person. From a touching modesty, the coldly polite believe in appearances. They trust that the outward respectability, composure and self-possession of those they encounter must be more or less the whole truth about them. They believe that people are as much in need, and as sane, as they indicate they are on the surface: that is, they believe that they are fine. Their way of hosting others is therefore guided by a sense of the inherent invulnerability and high-mindedness of their guests: they assume that these figures must wish to speak only of serious topics, especially cultural and political ones, that they will want to sit formally and eat a prescribed number of courses, that they would have no interest in small signs of reassurance, that they won’t wish to give expression to wayward and absurd sides of themselves, that they won’t have any awkward bodily urges or needs, and that their minds will be resolute and well-lit places. In other words, the coldly polite do not apply the knowledge they have of themselves to their interactions with others. The warm, on the other hand, make a well-founded guess that those they encounter, despite the observable initial evidence, are not what they seem. They may look adult and composed, but the truth will be reassu...