This autumn on my travels I read Laurie Lee’s ‘I Can’t Stay long’, a collection of essays and stories, in which there is a five page piece called ‘Charm’ which I found, as you may suspect, utterly charming.
Here are some favourite parts that I underlined...
It opens with:
“Charm is the ultimate seduction, against which there are few defences. If you’ve got it, you need almost nothing else, neither money, looks nor pedigree. It’s a gift, only given to give away, and the more used the more there is.”
And continues with these most excellent ones…
“Real charm is dynamic, an enveloping spell which mysteriously enslaves the senses. It is an inner light, fed on reservoirs of benevolence which well up like a thermal spring”
“You recognise charm by the feeling you get in its presence. You know who has it”
“Apart from the ability to listen - rarest of all human virtues and most difficult to sustain without vagueness - apart from warmth, sensitivity, and the power to please, what else is there visible? A generosity, I suppose, which makes no demands, a transaction which strikes no bargains, which doesn’t hold itself back till you’ve filled up a test-card making it clear that you’re in trouble.”
“It reveals itself also in a sense of ease, in casual but perfect manners, and often in a form of serenity of mind. Any person with it is more than just a popular fellow, he is a social healer.”
“But charm, in the end, is flesh and blood, a most potent act of behaviour, the laying down of a carpet by one person for another to give his existence a moment of honour”
“Charm is the rarest, least used, and most invincible of powers, which can capture in a single glance. It is close to love in that it moves without force, bearing gifts like growth of daylight”
And finally, culminates in this line:
“In the armoury of man, charm is the enchanted dart, light and subtle as a hummingbird. But it is deceptive in one thing - like a sense of humour, if you think you’ve got it, you probably haven’t.”
He knew. Old Laurie Lee. Oh how I love his words.
Reading Lee’s personal analysis of this wonderful human quality inspired me to write on charisma, another marvellous quality some human beings are graced with posessing.
One definition of charisma is
1. A special personal quality or power of an individual making him capable of influencing or inspiring large numbers of people
2. a quality inherent in a thing which inspires great enthusiasm and devotion
Listening to Russell Brand talk a few years ago, who personally, I find incredibly charismatic, he quoted Quentin Crisp on what charisma is:
“Charisma is the ability to influence without logic”
Like charm, I’m not convinced charisma is something you can try to possess. One can’t practise becoming more charismatic, well of course you can try, but am not sure you will entirely succeed. This makes me instantly think of angry or frustrated Buddhists I’ve met in my life who refer to themselves as Buddhists. Better, perhaps not to claim to be one. Leave that to others to decide?
There are tons of self help guides out there on this kind of stuff. Entrepreneurs and Life Coaches who wrote books in the 90s, when Anthony Robbins and Wayne Dyer were novel and new. There are numerous articles or tips listed online about how to be charismatic. But that’s a bit lame isn’t it? Not real.
Like when you see people reading these books in public on the underground. Reminds me of the phrase, ‘don’t air your dirty laundry in public’. If you’re going to read ‘How to win friends and influence people’ maybe start by doing so quietly and furthermore, alone.
Some people have just got it, charisma, quite naturally, like charm. It’s odd when you can feel someone trying to be something they are not. Just as it is utterly strange when you can see someone sitting in front of you whose read somewhere that mirroring your body language will make you like them, or when they lightly touch your elbow when ‘practising flirting’. It’s not natural because its orchestrated which means it is inauthentic. Better to be real, allowing things to happen. So if magnetic qualities like charm and charisma are a gift, of grace, a natural quality a person posesses within and therefore shares by simply being…Maybe now I am getting somewhere…
In simply being.
What are some of the qualities that makes up charisma?
Presence is key, as is warmth, the ability to listen, a certain quiet confidence, the ability to share vulnerability, humour and more.
Charisma. It’s almost onomatopoeic depending on how you say it, maybe in a New York 1950s gangster accent, or with empahasis on its metre.
I can visualise it in colours. Bright and expansive. It’s energetic, vibrant, present to the vitality of the moment. A slight urgency of living. Of being human and beyond. It shares and reaches out. It is positivity and pure possibility. All the good stuff.
Authenticity is everything to the quality of charisma. In fact Authenticity, is everything. I could write about that too.
One quote I want to end this little piece of little thoughts with is one I find continually life enhancing. When I try out what it suggests my life transforms instantaneously. Every interaction becomes so utterly potent, genuine and most of all tender. Instantly kinder and loving. It is this beast of a quote, said by someone called Og Mandino. Check it out:
“Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.”
Feel the feeling of charm and charisma arise simply by being, the interactions that follow are so much more real and beautiful. Refined and authentic.
Never mind what you are or what you’rd like to be. I have never much cared for the term ’self improvement’.
No to Self improvement. Yes to Self Revealing. In being. Revealing. Charming, charismatic, authentic. Real. True.
Listen carefully to others, pay close attention. Take the focus away from yourself, of trying to be this or that kind of person, better than, or more than. Or ‘growing’ as a person.
Simply listening and being with who is infront of you, truly in the moment and the charm of being whole heartedly human, let’s honour eachother and see how our relationships and lives enhance every day together.
A few qualities to think about, a few quotes to mull over.
Blog 2, published on 23/11/15
