Ever spend so much time with someone that you eventually run out of things to say?
I have.
My conversational bag of tricks is not especially deep.
I can usually start with the news. Local first. National if we’re feeling ambitious. International only if I sense the person is emotionally prepared and neither one of us has anywhere to be for the next forty-five minutes.
That buys me a little time.
Then I move to sports.
Depending on the person, I may actually start there. Sports are safe. Unless, of course, you root for the teams I root for, in which case sports are less of a conversation starter and more of a recurring cry for help.
Eventually I move on to work.
How’s the job?
How are the kids?
Everybody doing okay?
And then I reach the bottom of the bag.
This is when I deploy my most advanced conversational strategy.
I ask questions.
People generally like talking about themselves. Sometimes a lot. Occasionally so much that I begin wondering if I accidentally wandered into the unabridged audiobook of their life.
But most of the time, I’m interested.
For a while.
Because even things we care about occasionally have an expiration date.
I know people who could talk through a three-day power outage without repeating themselves.
I also know people who make conversation feel like an interrogation.
“How are you?”
“Fine.”
“Work good?”
“Yep.”
“Family?”
“Good.”
These people would make excellent prisoners of war. You could put them under a spotlight for twelve hours and they still wouldn’t reveal where they went for lunch.
But lately, I’ve found myself spending more time in places where conversation matters.
Places where there isn’t always somewhere else to go.
Sometimes there isn’t a television.
Sometimes pulling out your phone would be rude.
Sometimes you are simply sitting across from another human being and eventually realize something slightly terrifying:
We have almost nothing in common.
Different backgrounds. Different cultures. Different childhoods. Different beliefs. Different ways of seeing the world.
For most of my life, I think I gravitated toward the familiar.
People who understood my references.
People who laughed at the same things.
People whose lives made sense to me because they looked enough like mine.
There is comfort in that.
But comfort and growth are not always the same thing.
What I’m discovering now is that sometimes the real conversation begins after the bag of tricks is empty.
After the news.
After the sports.
After work and kids and all the easy stuff.
That’s when you actually have to become curious.
What was your childhood like?
What do you miss?
What scares you?
What do you believe?
How did you end up here?
And slowly, something changes.
The person across from you stops being someone you have nothing in common with.
They become someone you simply haven’t taken the time to know yet.
That feels different.
I’m still learning this.
Sometimes I still move through the stages pretty quickly.
I don’t want to talk.
I don’t know what to say.
This feels awkward.
Fine, I’ll try.
And then, every once in a while:
Wow.
I’m glad I did.
Because there is something extraordinary about seeing the world through somebody else’s eyes for a few minutes.
Especially when their life looks nothing like yours.
Maybe that is one of the quiet privileges of being alive.
We spend so much time looking for people who are like us.
And then life sits us next to someone who isn’t.
Eventually the news runs out.
The sports run out.
The bag is empty.
And sitting right there in front of you is another human being.
Turns out, that was the conversation all along.
Comments