Most people are infatuated with their ego, egomaniacs, or plainly put narcissists.
So when someone, anyone, comes to them with an ‘innocent’ question, they spill the goods as if they recited the Lord’s Prayer in church. They don’t have to, of course, but they do. Because why? Because most people lap up attention as if they were a clutter of starving cats facing a saucer of milk.
And when you are as hungry for attention as cats naturally are for milk, any shmuck can turn a chat into an interrogation, and you into a fool spilling the beans.
The trick, ladies and gentlemen, is for you not minding what that attention does to your ego.
The trick is ignoring the salve people’s attention provides to your vainglorious nature.
I do maintain and declare that people are more likely to put up with pain, because it feeds into their Jesus martyr complex. On the other hand, they are more susceptible to lower their shields, so to speak, when faced with that insidious warm feeling of being the centre of attention.
Spies and smart folk have been exploiting that heroic flaw since times immemorial. That and people’s innate gregarious nature have sunk more ships, undone many a citadel, and destroyed empires, more than direct confrontation.
That is why whenever people you don’t know or work for, ask you a question, you should find a pretense and exit stage left.
Götterdämmerung 