To Be or Not To Be

A little kingdom I possess,
Where thoughts and feelings dwell;
And very hard the task I find
Of governing it well.
~ Louisa May Alcott

...that more or less describes my situation!

~A Wise Man Said~

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
~ Aristotle
Monday, March 11, 2019
 
I’m not someone who likes small talk much but I’m very fond of conversation. You might ask what the difference is because one man’s small talk might be another man’s conversation… but for me there are a few things that make a conversation very distinct from small talk. For one, a conversation will go deep into a subject rather than merely skimming the surface and for two, a conversation isn’t a polite way to fill time nor is it necessarily ‘polite’ (now that’s small talk). Other things that come to mind… the topic of a conversation would have some level of resonance with both parties (without which they cannot really want to go into depth) and it would engage the mind in some way (in a way say the ‘weather’ can’t). I might have added that a conversation is usually had with someone you know well or reasonably well (or maybe wish to know well?) because it requires a certain amount of freedom of thought and expression…but I would grant that sometimes you may meet people whom you just launch into conversation with because something seems right.

Now, as is the way I seem to always begin my posts, I intend to talk about one thing and then talk about something entirely different. ‘Conversation’ itself was quite incidental to the point I had intended to make. That point is that these days it’s become almost impossible to have a conversation with most people because of the blooming mobile phone! I don’t know about you (dear reader, yes you!) but I tend to put my phone away when I am with company. I might check it once in a while but rarely and if I am actually in the middle of a conversation, I won’t check it at all. Even if I hear a beep or a ring. However, I have noticed for a while now that most people have one eye on the phone and the other ear on the conversation, and frankly, it’s not much of a conversation for me. Imagine animatedly talking about something or sharing something when the other person is intently staring at the phone, sometimes typing, sometimes scrolling, and sometimes even taking a call. It puts me off the conversation completely. I switch off from it, and many a times, from the person. I find it disrespectful to say the least, even if not meant as much, and I feel that it reduces a conversation to something less than even small talk…because with small talk both are equally engaged in something pointless but here only one person is engaged in something that may well not have a point.
What I have been noticing though is that it’s not just this person or that person or my brother (he’s a big culprit in this department) who does it but I would be hard pressed to think of anyone I know who actually doesn’t do it…apart from older folks like my mother or aunts who aren’t into smartphones or social media or obsessed with it. I also have a sense—though I might be wrong—that men do this more than women; I mean, women probably are on the phone as much or more than men but when in the middle of a conversation they tend to be a bit more tactful (though it is quite possible that they’re mentally distracted anyway).
It seems to me that all this has taken the joy out of conversations. Which is why nowadays when I meet people who actually listen and converse intently without peering into the phone every few seconds, I feel really pleased. There is a lot to be said about the virtual world but I’m of the opinion that it should complement one’s experiences in the real world rather than diminishing it… which is unfortunately what seems to be happening…

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 6:44 pm 0 comments
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