On Conversations

This past week I had the good fortune to have coffee with The Dog Whisperer,  part of the larger "Grand Farewell Tour" that has been going on since the notification of the new job became confirmed.  

By the time I looked up at the watch, I realized that over three hours had gone by with us just talking about this and that:  our former employer, her job search, iaijutsu (when will I never talk about that that), animals, life in general.  "This was great" I commented as we were leaving.  "I never seem to have these sorts of conversations any more".

-----

This is not the first conversation of late I have had to this extent: recently my standing call with Rainbow ran a full two hours and coffee with another former employee ran 1.5 hours.  Conversations with La Contessa when I am in Old Home do not go less than 1.5 hours and often over that.  And as I thought on these things, the comment I made to The Dog Whisperer came up again:  Why do I not seem to have these kinds of conversations any more?

Or perhaps more appropriately, why do we - I, at least - not make the time to have them?

----

Social media and technology has done a great deal, both good and ill. One of the good things that it has done is that it has allowed people to find other people that share their interests in a way that one could not before:  many of those that share my interests live in other states or other countries, and even on this blog I have "found my tribe" thanks to the InterWeb.  And it allows us to keep in touch with each other in a way that we would not have been able to before: information (pictures, conversations) can take place in virtually real time from anywhere in the world (not that I often awake to watch the live coverage of the annual Kobudo Kyokai demonstration with a massive time difference, but I could if I wanted to).  A large part of the origination of the more frequent writing on this blog, in fact, was to be able to share my life in New Home with my family, primarily TB The Elder, who faithfully read it daily up to the end of 2020 (although, as he often informed me, he did not always "get" everything I wrote about).

That said, social media and technology bring issues as well.  A simple issue is simply that by finding "more people like me", I also tend to focus on communication with those people and less with others, something that - like or not - we had to do in the analog age of society.  Another thing is that conversations often are not in "real time", but rather in the time it takes to respond.  It is rather like an author writing a book:  the author can get up, walk around, get a drink, and then get back to writing.  For the characters, it is as if no time has passed.  Thus, conversations are often always a sort of hanging conversation, with responses drifting in and out based on availability and interest.  

It can be great for keeping in touch.  It is less great when one is seeking deep and engaging conversations.

----

Along with the fact we seem to talk less to each other, we also seem to set aside less time to talk to each other.

Once upon a time - within my lifetime - we dropped by to "talk to people".  I would be tempted to say that this is a preserve of the older generation (as I am almost "in" that generation now), except that habit seems to less prevalent than it used to be even among them.

On one hand, I can understand that.  In the modern day society in which we live, people are busy.  Schedules can be mapped out for days, weeks or even months in advance.  Simply "stopping on by" almost smacks of a certain rudeness, a sort of enforced demand to make conversation:  "Behold, it is I, descended from the bounds of Mt. Olympus. Stop ye thine activities and converse".  Most people will make an attempt, but there is nothing less conducive to conversation than someone constantly checking their watch or phone or the clock, fidgeting as the seconds tick by.

On the other hand, our modern day society can program time to where we simply have none to give:  every hour, every minute, every second needs to be "productive".  We must do the things and meet the objectives, personal or familial or corporate.  Conversation becomes something that happens "in between" other things, snatched at the beginning and end of meetings or mentioned as individuals pass in the home or church or social events on their way to the next thing - or, as noted above, in the quasi-timelessness of electronic space.

Unemployment gives one an odd reprieve on this order, almost a unique one:  one has all the time in the world and yet no time at all, flipping between the driving force of needing to find work and the reality that one cannot will a job into existence.  Conversations become easier when the currency one has is time itself with no other pressing thing to spend it on.

----

In high school, and even into our community college days, Uisdean Ruadh and I would walk the rails and talk.

The walk to the railroad near my house was not more than a quarter mile; from there we would walk the rails into my home town - if one walks far enough, one ends up at the former train station from years gone by.  This was long ago, when two young men walking the railroad tracks in small town America was likely to cause no more fuss than a recommendation to "Watch for trains".

These walks could take two or more hours, the crunching on the gravel giving way to the slap of our shoes on pavement and sidewalk as we walked the streets until, tired or talked out, we would make our way back to my house.  The conversations are not now specific in my mind, except the fact that we talked - about everything: school, plans, wild fantasies of imaginations, girls, religion - in many ways like our conversations now. 

These were never forced, and likely we seldom had a specific goal in mind for for our conversations.  We just walked and talked, two young men with no money and no better activity than to banter with words.

----

If one has a conversation - a true conversation, not just the banal sort of exchange that seems to pass for such these days - one forgets the wonder of what a conversation can truly be.

To talk back and forth, to see point and counterpoint spiral up and above and overtopping one another, to find out things one never knew about the other - "Oh, you enjoyed that too?" -, to spend the time truly talking about a subject without worrying about the time ticking down:  this is perhaps in some ways a very faint reflection of Heaven. I can never see myself talking to God in this way - the difference between us is far too large - but I can see having such conversations with The Saved, where time simply has no meaning and conversations can truly go on as long as they need to (as a side note, I suspect prayer is supposed to be like this, but mine never feel this way).

But all of this starts with something.  And that something is a conversation, a real conversation.  And to have a real conversation, one has to reserve and spend the time.

I cannot say that I will suddenly change how I do such things, or even that I can.  But these slivers of the real sort of thing make me hunger for such intellectual stimulation and true sharing of the intellect and souls are the more.

Odd that technology allows to connect more than ever, yet seems to deny us the ability to actual converse.