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21 observations from people watching 

Appreciation
8
Importance
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Date Added
11.29.25
TLDR
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2 Cents
Really damn good!! A really nice essay topic executed very well, and it makes you think about interactions and about yourself.
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  1. It is easy to tell how happy someone is to see another person enter a conversation. There is happy, and there is polite, and they look very different. Polite has a mechanical quality to it, like carrying out all the right movements to replace batteries in a remote. Happy has a boundless quality: unpredictable, even when it is at a low level. There is an openness, allowing another person to surprise and delight them. The easiest way to say this: there is no script for happy. It tumbles out of the body. Polite comes from the mind –it is restrained and calculated – measured lines and pauses. There are reinforcing loops in a polite person and a happy person. A person closed to the possibility of delight finds less of it. A person open to it finds more.

#9, #15 are other favorites.