Your Life Is Your Business. Other Lives Are Not Your Business.

I have always believed there is a line between being interested in another person and entering a part of their life that does not belong to you. Then I started dancing, met new people and discovered that sometimes curiosity opens a door rather than crosses a boundary.

By Ismar

When I was a child, my parents sometimes stopped me when I became curious about something that did not concern children.

“This subject is not for kids,” they would say. “Maybe when you grow up, you can discuss it, but it is not the time now.”

There was another lesson that stayed with me much longer.

“Your life is your business. Other lives are not your business.”

Leave other people to live how they want, they told me, and you will avoid many problems.

I think I still live very much according to that rule.

If I meet someone for the first time, of course I need to ask something. What is your name? Where do you live? What do you like? Do you enjoy sports or travelling? These are normal questions to me. Otherwise, how do two people begin a conversation?

But there is a point where curiosity becomes something different.

If someone tells me they work for a company that pays well, I would never immediately ask, “How much do you earn every month?” Even with people I know quite well, I consider salary a private matter.

The same applies to relationships.

You might ask someone whether they are married. That is one thing. Asking about the intimate details of the marriage is something else entirely.

I have been asked questions like this myself.

Years ago, a French teacher asked whether I had a girlfriend. When I said no, he asked whether I had a boyfriend. I answered him normally, but I thought it was a strange and impolite question. I would not ask somebody else the same thing unless that person had already opened that kind of conversation with me.

I have also had people ask me very directly about the sexual side of relationships I had many years ago. I never understood why they wanted this information.

It was related only to me and to the woman involved.

What would another person do with the answer?

That is perhaps the question I ask myself most often when people gossip.

Information with nowhere useful to go.

Some people are extremely interested in the private lives of others.

They want to know who is seeing whom, who is having problems, who might be cheating on somebody. Then they pass the information to someone else.

I do not enjoy this.

If somebody tells me that one married person is cheating on another, what am I supposed to do with that information? I have no intention of solving their relationship. I do not want to become involved. For me, it is useless information.

I have also been on the receiving end of gossip.

Once, a cleaner working in my girlfriend’s home told her she had seen me at a bus stop talking to another woman. I did not even understand what she was talking about. I had not been meeting another woman during the period she mentioned, but suddenly there was a small problem created from something somebody thought they had seen.

Another time, I had met the girlfriend of a colleague only once or twice. Later she disappeared, and somebody contacted me suggesting I might have problems with the police because I knew her.

I knew almost nothing about her life.

The police never contacted me. Nothing came of it. But I remember wondering how a person who barely knew the situation had connected my name with it in the first place.

This is what bothers me about gossip. Information travels, changes shape and creates problems for people who may have nothing to do with the original story.

I prefer my parents’ rule.

Your life is your business.

Curiosity needs an invitation.

This does not mean that I want people to remain strangers.

I think curiosity depends on how the other person approaches you.

If someone is polite with me, I tend to be polite with them. If someone is very direct, perhaps I can also become more direct. I do not change myself completely according to the person, but I respond to the way they interact with me.

At my dancing classes, for example, when somebody new arrives and I dance with her, the first thing I normally ask is her name.

If she replied, “Why do you want to know my name?” I probably would not ask anything else.

For me, that would be a clear message: there is no space for the conversation to continue.

Fortunately, nobody has answered me like that.

I also know there are questions people do not like. I do not ask women their age, for example. If people do not like discussing something, there is no reason to force the subject.

Perhaps curiosity should work like dancing.

You make a movement, the other person responds, and then you discover whether there is another movement to make.

Making mistakes and having fun.

The dancing classes have taught me something else about people.

There are people who become very critical when somebody makes a mistake. I am not very interested in becoming closer to these people.

We are there to learn.

Of course we make mistakes.

I prefer the people who can make mistakes and have fun.

Some people have been dancing much longer than I have. Some dance better than me. Some, in my opinion, have been there longer and still dance worse than me. But ability is not the most important thing when deciding whether I want another conversation with somebody.

What matters more is how the person behaves.

Can we make a mistake without becoming angry? Can we laugh? Can we enjoy learning?

About two months ago, one of those conversations continued outside the dancing school.

I met a woman there who has this attitude. She wants to dance better and have fun. She does not become angry or annoyed when we make mistakes.

We started going somewhere else to dance.

Then we went walking.

We had lunch together.

And eventually I had to admit something.

I think we are dating.

This was not why I started dancing.

I did not enter the dancing school looking for a girlfriend. I think most people in the group are not there specifically to find a relationship. They are there because they want to dance.

But wherever you go, you meet different people.

Sometimes you become friends. Sometimes the relationship remains inside that particular environment. Sometimes nothing happens.

And sometimes something more happens.

Apparently, I am not single.

Even after saying all this, I described myself during our conversation as a single man.

The Mayor disagreed.

I explained that I meant I live alone. We do not share the same house.

He told me that this is not really the definition of being single.

Maybe he is right.

I am also trying not to create too many expectations. Human relationships are not easy. As we become older, I think they can become more complicated because we arrive with a background. We have had experiences. Sometimes we become defensive.

If I create a very big expectation, the frustration can also become very big.

So I prefer to see how the relationship progresses.

But there is no question that dancing has changed something in my life.

Recently somebody asked me what I thought about the dancing classes. I told them that perhaps it was one of the best things I have done during the last five years.

People found this answer funny.

Maybe it is surprising because I have often considered myself an unsocial person.

After dancing, however, a small group of us sometimes goes somewhere to eat. It might be a snack bar, a restaurant or one of the places where food stalls appear at the weekend.

We sit together.

We eat.

We talk.

They tell me that I am very talkative.

When I tell them I am shy, they do not believe me.

And perhaps the final evidence came near the end of our conversation.

The Mayor asked whether the woman I had met speaks English.

Without thinking too much about the words, I replied:

“My girlfriend?”

He stopped me immediately.

There it was.

I had said it myself.

For someone who believes very strongly that other people’s lives are none of my business, life has developed a nice sense of humour.

I still believe in boundaries. I still dislike gossip. I still think we should allow other people their privacy and not demand information simply because we are curious.

But curiosity is not always an intrusion.

Sometimes it is simply asking someone’s name.

Sometimes it is discovering that they also do not mind making mistakes.

Sometimes it is agreeing to another dance.

And then another conversation.

And then lunch.

I hope this one continues.