Is Conversation A Dying Art?

One day, according to a story I read once, a man with a serious illness was wheeled into a hospital room where another patient was resting on a bed next to the window. They started their conversation and the two became friends. The one next to the window would look out of it and spend the next few hours delighting his bedridden companion with vivid descriptions of the world outside. Some days he would describe the beauty of the trees in the park across from the hospital and on other days, he would entertain his friend with replays of things people were doing as they walked by the hospital. They both had a wonderful time.

One morning the patient who had given his friend so much happiness by recounting the sights outside the window was declared dead and wheeled out of the hospital room. The other man quickly asked the attending nurse that his bed be placed next to the window. But as he looked out the window, he discovered something that made him shake: the window faced a stark brick wall. His former roommate had fabricated up the incredible sighs as they converse. It was a loving gesture to make the world of his friend a little better during a difficult time. Such is the power of a hearty conversation!

Hope you agree with me that it is not always necessary for something more meaningful to come out of a conversation but a patient ear, a few moments, and two or more individuals with their thoughts, words or heart at least to a certain degree are enough to create magic for a lifetime.

I feel, we simply don’t have the patience to talk anymore. Or even listen to others. We are already preoccupied with other things. Impatience is slowly creeping in between every relationship, be it family members under one roof, parents and children, husband and wife, siblings, friends, neighbours or whoever may be.

There is only dialogue no more conversation. It’s almost like we wait for the ‘talk part’ to get over let alone eye contact so we can relax and go back to our self-absorbed world. We love talking, arguing and debating in our heads.

We are hiding our true feelings under the mask of technology. Maybe we do not want to deal with unpredictability or inconvenient scenes that usually take place in face-to-face interaction or noise called ‘conversation’. We can’t control what we are going to say or what others are going to say. We can’t edit, delete or put it mute according to our wish. We don’t get to re-touch the face, voice, the flesh, the body which is a big thing to deal with.

On the other side of it, I too feel sometimes that the reason behind keeping ourselves at distance from a conversation could be because it’s so stale and repetitive. We get enough of fake people, our judgments, our ego, and keeping each other at a distance of an amount we can control. We want to speak by choice now, to people we want to. And converse with even fewer.

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A genuine conversation or freely exchanging what we feel can de-stress people and give a feeling of acceptance and connection. Conversation with others helps us to know ourselves better. It helps us to get in touch with a part of ourselves that scares us, the part we keep pushing back to a clumsy corner.

A simple heartfelt text or an enriching phone call that you initiate or a few moments of love and care might create a spark of hope and a feeling of connection while sharing a common pain during a challenging time. What could be a better reminder for all of us than those pandemic days to make us believe again in conversation–the dying art?

Image Credits: Chevanon Photography on Pexels 

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