A dying art
Editor’s note: A version of this column was originally published July 28, 2013.
Iregret to report that I believe society has all but lost the art of carrying on something as simple as genuine conversation.
Instead of exchanging thoughts and ideas, how often do you overhear others talking solely about themselves? Just listen; you’re bound to witness it.
So many of us nowadays speak as though only our lives carry significance. It’s truly a wonder we any longer learn much of anything from each other.
For instance, I overheard yet another discourse the other day while waiting for my car to be washed:
“I feel like I can’t seem to get through. I don’t know how much more I can take of it. I don’t deserve to waste my valuable time dealing with stuff that doesn’t interest me. And why in the world would I waste my time talking about anything that I don’t find interesting? Can you understand how I feel?”
Impressive numbers for any self-respecting narcissist. Eight “I’s,” a “me” and two “my’s” all crammed into 59 words explains my point.
Then there’s what
I call the “topper” between two or more folks. That would be the person who doesn’t allow another to even complete the thought they introduced before jumping in to inject what they feel would be their more impressive example. It goes like this:
Person 1: “I almost hit a motorcycle carrying a child last night when the driver swerved hard in the rain to …”
Mr. Topper: “Well, if you think that’s something, last year a cyclist ran a red light in front of me and actually hit me broadside in an intersection … yada, yada!”
Why couldn’t the topper, out of simple respect, have waited until the first person finished his own story? I’m not sure what exists in the human psyche that prompts one to interrupt another’s stream of thought with a topper. Is it an insecure need to feel superior?
I was raised with the thought that conversation was a verbal exchange in which everyone involved asked questions and shared thoughts. In short, a conversation involved participants asking as many questions of others as they did in focusing on themselves.
Yet today I seldom see others actually expressing enough interest in the lives of their “conversation” partners to ask a single relevant question.
In this “aware of others” category I’d include the likes of: How are things going with you? What’s the most exciting thing to happen to you lately? So how do you feel about that?
Few today seem to understand the most effective way by far for one person to impress another is to simply ask about the other person’s life and thoughts rather than constantly talking about himself.
Some may recall that during the teaching years at Ohio State, I’d begin undergraduate classes by sharing my view of a fundamental reality they needed to understand if they hoped to better understand human nature and thereby better achieve success in a world filled with billions of people.
After scrawling a 15-word sentence on the blackboard, I could usually see at least a glimmer of comprehension in a few youthful eyes.
“To anyone else in your life, you are not the most significant person. They are!” the sentence read.
They realized whatever information they shared in conversation or writing with anyone else is naturally being filtered through the other person’s ego-lens as to how that information could affect them.
If they told their parents they were flunking out of college, they should expect mom and dad to reflect on the wasted family resources they’d invested.
If they went to a job interview, they should expect the interviewer to be interested in what they could do for the employer rather than wanting to provide them with a job.
If they suddenly told their best friend they were flying to Hawaii for spring break, they should expect their friend to wonder how that affects their plans.
And if they were presented with an honor, they should expect many of their classmates or peers to believe the honor should have been theirs.
Something like this ego-filtering must lie at the heart of our increasing inability to carry on meaningful conversations in our shared world.
Sadly, so many now appear to believe that they are living the only life that matters or that they are the only ones who experience interesting events. Hence the one-way soliloquies and topper stories increase.
How do any of us learn from others if we can’t respectfully exchange ideas?
Perhaps there’s some deeper psychology related to rampant personal insecurities at work that I as an observer certainly am not qualified to evaluate. Maybe we’ve dropped the ball at teaching our video-absorbed youngsters how to truly converse in meaningful ways.
I do know that I’m not the only one noticing how pervasive this trend has grown as we’ve increasingly become distracted by electronic and virtual technologies at the expense of enriching our limited lives together through meaningful conversation.