Much of what I write about in this column has been spawned from conversations that I have had in the recent past.
When things are as close to normal as normal gets in my life, I find myself engaged in numerous lengthy and wonderful conversations over the course of any given week. Oh sure, sometimes great conversations can be brief, but more often than not, they can push an hour or more depending on the subject.
Unfortunately, there have been precious few conversations of note in my life lately.
I have a rather large group of friends and family members that I can usually count on for great conversations. Lately, it seems that we all have had little to say, and instead of just talking for the sake of talking, we let the conversation go until another time. We know it will happen when the timing is right.
The timing hasn’t been right for me because of a lot of things going on that could be called anti-conversational. Business and personal issues have gotten in the way of good conversation. That which must be done has trumped that which I wish to do.
Many of my friends and family are dealing with issues that rob them of conversation as well.
This lack of conversation has made it increasingly difficult for me to come up with subject matter to write about here. This is the second week in a row that I have found myself pushing the deadline, waiting for inspiration. I’m sure that my editor, at this very moment, is nervously pacing back and forth in his office, wondering if he should hold the presses any longer.
Well, all right. He’s not doing that, but I like to imagine that he is.
One good conversation can provide enough ideas for a month of columns.
I begin to miss a good conversation when I have gone without one for a while.
Good conversation is not something that can be forced. It is something that must happen naturally. A good conversation is an organic, living thing.
It has been my experience that the best conversations start out as such, from the very first sentence. Small talk rarely produces a conversation beyond its namesake.
Small talk is a waste of time.
My good friend, Wayne Genghis, and I were having a conversation quite a while ago now. We were talking about small talk and how annoying it can sometimes be to listen to and, as a result of listening to it, being obliged to take part in it. Wayne said that he would prefer to sit in awkward silence than to engage in small talk. I agreed with him, and decided then and there that I would do my best to no longer participate in conversations that were small-talk based.
Life is too short for small talk.
I had vowed to engage only in big talk from that point forward.
Okay, that just sounds wrong. It sounds funny, but it is still wrong.
For some reason, small talk is merely annoying, but if you used the term “big talk” to describe anything that wasn’t small talk, you would sound pompous.
But it would be a sin to relegate a great conversation to a term as simple as just plain “talk.”
There is so much that can be learned from having in-depth conversations with people. The ideas that get explored during the course of a conversation can be the very things that help us to understand ourselves and others.
Those conversations can help us to reaffirm our positions on an issue or they can be a window that allows us to look at things differently and possibly, for better or for worse, change our minds on how we think about something.
My mother would always say that a conversation is like a game of catch. The ball gets thrown back and forth, over and over again.
Catch isn’t much fun if one person just stands there holding the ball. The ball should be held for just long enough to wind up, take aim and throw it back.
A good conversation rarely stays on one topic. It will wander all over the place. It’s funny how sometimes when a good conversation ends, it does so when it returns to the place where it began. Kind of like a lingual cruise.
My lingual cruise ship has run aground.
For the time being, I’ll sit and wait for high tide to lift the thing off of this reef.
I can’t wait to get back out to sea. Exciting ports-of-call await.
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