The art of conversation

By | 00:30 4 comments

Note Before You Continue Reading : I wrote this post a few months ago but never got around to posting it … Just came across it – and wanted to share it with you

The_Fine_Art_Of_Conversation_by_inkblort

Have you ever thought about the words that we use when having a conversation ? We tend to take words for granted – a part of a speech – a part of normal every day conversation ?

Does that mean that we take the words we hear a ‘given’ ? Does that mean we believe everything we hear or does that imply we automatically mean everything we say ?

I actually asked my first question in this post to a car full of people that I was travelling with – and they did come out with some interesting answers.  One person said that conversations between people are almost for the sake of saying something – almost for the sake of just talking / responding because ‘we have to’ and not because we really thought about what we are saying. It’s as if we were on autopilot mode.

Think about it … we can’t possibly believe or mean everything that we say to another ? What about those words spoken out of anger or sheer disgust ? Could it be a spur of the moment speech or our thought process at the time ?

 

"To listen closely and reply well is the highest perfection we are able to attain in the art of conversation."

-- Francois de La Rochefoucauld

4 comments:

Kokonad said...

A nice thought provoking post. :)

I always believe that whatever is uttered in anger comes without filters. It's probably a feeling that person has gone through at some point of time with the listener in question.
Even if it follows with an apology by the person who has shown anger, the words contain truth, at some level. :) There's a lot one can learn from that!

Dazediva said...

@ Kokonad - Glad you enjoyed the post. I felt it might be a bit incomplete but never-the-less posted it up hehe

I am leaning towards agreeing with you on the anger front. I know many a times I have lashed out in anger, and have followed it up with an apology - however somewhere in there, my words have hit a mark (regardless of either party admitting it)

The point of this post was to highlight the fact (if we really think about it), that nowadays we no longer have 'conversations' - it's all about SMS, Online chatting, and Social Networking sites !

donny said...

interesting...and its quite true ! Most of the times, we just talk and at times, we talk with overwhelming emotions mostly anger, or even frustration, love and so on. Those times, you get conscious and end up with more words to drive home the point. At all other points in our drab life with predictable people and situations, we hardly weigh every word! Best example wud b gaalis :) It could either be a slang or a well intented dart!

P.S - your blog just doesnot accept a Name/url and forces me to google id !

Dazediva said...

@ Donny - thanks for visiting my blog; couldn't access yours due to permissions. Yeah my settings were such that you had to be registered in some way (to avoid spam) - have changed the setting now - so lets see how it goes.

Whatever we do 'talk' about tends to be supported with lots of emotion and all the additional words are there to hone a point i.e we end up repeating ourselves in more than one way to say the same thing

I use swear words (gaa-lihs in hindi) to emphasize a point and not in a personal abusive way - so I get what you mean by that.