Great Conversation

There is something to be said for a great conversation. The kind of conversation where there is an exchange of thoughts and ideas and stories that flows back and forth traveling along until, when it is finished, the participants feel completely satisfied and stimulated. I LOVE to have conversations like that with people.

I think I learned how to be a good conversationalist and learned to appreciate a great conversation by talking with my dad. He was a wonderful story teller and quite well read. All through high school and college (I lived at home for most of my college years – except for the year I spent in Europe), Dad and I would hang out a local deli and discuss politics, religion, culture, and history. We would discuss in depth books we had read, talk about things we read in magazines or in the newspaper, and discuss why people are the way they are. Sort of analyze people and how events in people’s lives impact how they behave today. He taught me not only to expand my horizons by reading new and different things but also how to understand people instead of just taking them at face value. He also taught me the art of really listening when having a conversation and to really participate and not just nod my head in agreement (as I see some people do when someone is talking to them).

Not to digress from writing about conversation but, since Dad and I talked so much, I know a lot of stories from his life and about our family that my brothers and sister may not know. But, Dad had a stroke 3 ½ years before he died and his stories changed after that. He started inserting story lines from movies or books into his conversations as if he had experienced them himself. So now my family tends to say, when I’m telling them something Dad told me, “is this pre-stroke or post-stroke?”. In other words, did Dad really experience this or did he see it in a movie sometime? It’s a legitimate question. One of the many difficulties of dealing with someone with a form of dementia.

Back to the art of conversation. What I read in a book last week was that a good conversation is not just repeating memories but also talking about the present and the dreams of the future. The book I am reading is If You Want To Write by Brenda Ueland. She says on page 44: “Most talking is merely narrative, memory, which is not creative imagination…In conversation you tell something done or thought or said yesterday. It is living in the past, not the present. But when talk is truly interesting, then one is living in the present. A change is taking place in the conversers. One tells the other something that he needs or longs to hear, or that frightens him. That is, it effects a change in him..” Then, she says, in referring to married people living creatively in the present: “They have the delicious feeling that they are being listened to at last;-not politely but with a strong alternating current and chemical changes taking place in their souls”.

That last part really touched me. It confirmed what I always thought. A great conversation is something that touches the soul. Feeds the spirit the way that a great meal feeds the body. I love when I finish a conversation with someone and my brain is alert and excited and I can say with a satisfied sigh “that was a GREAT conversation!”