More than once, my parents have walked in on me leaning as far out of the window as possible. I was not—for the most part—trying to kill myself. Instead, I was carefully trying to listen to arguments that my neighbours were having downstairs. Sometimes, if I knew the argument would last a while and I was in no danger of being caught eavesdropping, I would open the front door to listen to it properly, without the voices being muffled. Unfortunately for me, most times I’d hear nothing interesting. Still, I’d persist—a dedicated eavesdropper and phone-peeper, my nose always in others’ business.
But is it really? As a child, I was (perhaps rightly?) taught that eavesdropping is bad, that I don’t need to know everything, that I need to “mind my own business.” Focusing too much on someone else’s life—whether a stranger or my aunt’s—was seen as an extension of gossip: disrespectful and trite. As a result, I’d try to hide my interest in other people’s lives, as…