A papa I recently met, whom I message frequently, suddenly sent me a long poem by Byron. He likes poetry, and I wasn’t sure how to respond. But he gets anxious when I take too long to reply, so I quickly looked up Byron and sent him a brief impression of his work, mentioned that I like novelists from around the Meiji era and that it was educational to discover a new world, then wrapped up with “Good luck with work” and sent the message—but he hasn’t replied.

I think a papa (a male supporter) who sends you poems is a romantic. I’m not very clever, so I don’t always understand difficult things. But if it were me, I’d first thank him for taking the time to choose and send me a poem just for me. Since I don’t know what kind of poem it is, I’m not sure whether you should add your thoughts on it. But perhaps you could accept it as a gift and tell him how happy you are that he shared something important to him with you.

Just tell him what you honestly thought, as the person asking the question did. I’m not very bright, so I don’t understand anything that complicated. You’re amazing, papa—I really respect you. If you say that, it feels like he might be less likely to send you a flood of poems later on… Probably… I think.

I’d never read Byron before, so I downloaded a collection of his poems for the time being. I skimmed through it, but it didn’t move me at all. The person who asked the question deserves credit just for replying with their impressions! And, as Maezawa pointed out, I’m also curious which poem it was. For that matter, I wonder which Meiji-era writer they mean.

Since they went to the trouble of quoting Byron, I feel it would have been better if they had also explained what the poem was about. If you don’t understand the feelings behind the poem (and I know you might not understand it even after reading it, or interpret it differently), you don’t know how you were supposed to respond. I’m guessing they sent the poem in place of what they really wanted to say, so I feel like knowing which poem it was would have been important. Still, if you didn’t understand it, wouldn’t it have been better to simply tell them that you didn’t?

I do believe effort pays off, but… I think it would probably have been fine to send your honest, immediate reaction without worrying too much about being considerate. Feedback from someone different from you can be valuable, and you can only get that kind of reaction in the moment. Once you’ve had time to think it over, it’s no longer your genuine first impression.

It really depends on the person, and my experience is fairly limited, so I’m not sure if this is the “right” answer—but I’ll share what I’ve experienced. I’m currently in my 30s, and I started my own business in my 20s. From the beginning, most of the people I dealt with professionally were older than me—roughly in their 40s to 70s. Isn’t that about the same age gap as the typical papa-katsu women and papas? We’ve talked about favorite historical figures, wine, cars, golf, paintings, and all sorts of other hobbies. But honestly, when meeting someone for the first time, I’ve never felt that they expected me to have detailed knowledge or come up with clever responses. I don’t think they were testing me, either. I never pretended to know more than I did—though I may have ended up sounding that way sometimes. Basically, I made an effort to show genuine interest and listen carefully. That said, this is a little more difficult when it comes to work. Rather than simply listening and accepting everything, I feel that people often respond better when I share my own thoughts with conviction, even if it comes across as a little cheeky. That may be a part of my personality that I’m unwilling to compromise on, but I think being just a little cheeky makes me more fun to tease. I wouldn’t want to be teased and nothing more, but they also treat me affectionately, so I’m fine with it. With people who only tease me without showing any affection, people I simply don’t click with, or people who do things I genuinely dislike, it would be difficult for me to maintain an ongoing relationship—even if they paid me a lot for a while. Sorry for going off on a tangent. When meeting someone for the first time, I respond as I described above. As the relationship continues, I sometimes study their hobbies and experiences so I can understand them more deeply and respond appropriately. But in most cases, they’re already far ahead of me and have even more knowledge and experience, so I think maintaining an attitude of genuine interest and listening carefully is important no matter how far things progress. For the most part, this approach has worked for me so far—and still does. I do sometimes wonder whether it’s really okay to continue like this now that I’m in my 30s, but the other person is getting older too, so my circumstances haven’t changed all that much. Doing this with everyone would be incredibly exhausting, and eventually I’d lose sight of what I was even doing. So these days, I choose who I spend time with, and I only continue responding this way to people I genuinely like. Sorry for the long answer, but I hope it helps.

I’m Potassium, a female member. There was an executive at my former workplace who was like that—he was a huge fan of Confucius. I found myself thinking, “What is this person even trying to say?” So I paraphrased a passage from the New Testament, thinking it might get the conversation going. He ended up disliking me. What I’m trying to say is that even making a casual comment about something someone likes can sometimes mean stepping on a landmine. I’ve studied Jōdo Shinshū Buddhism and Catholic Christianity extensively and came to understand the broad outlines of their philosophies. But that executive taught me that, in the end, everyone interprets things in their own way. I feel poetry is probably the same.... When someone brings up a subject I don’t understand, I phrase it like, “This is how I interpreted it, but what do you think, papa? Please tell me.” (Not my current papa.) If he’s the kind of papa who judges people’s ideas as right or wrong, then… well, that’s just not the kind of thing I mean. H....a....r....a....s....s....m....e....n....t. Just sharing my personal opinion and experience.

Just block that creep.

Perhaps he sent it because he likes poetry. No one else can know what you should have done.