Permission to Not Engage in Conversation at This Time
Usually there’s a voiceover button here, but not today. It’s raining so loudly that I didn’t press record. Perhaps I should have given it a go; the ambient rain may have added a nice effect. Anyway, enough rain talk. Let’s discuss Permission to Not Engage in Conversation.
I love listening far more than I love talking because other people and their stories are so intriguing to me. When I was five I wanted to be a spy (an unrealised dream - sob) because I loved eavesdropping on adults’ conversations. Now, I like listening to people’s struggles and frustrations, so I can help them.
It seems to me that there is something about the listening part of conversation that has become diseased in our society.
Social media has given people a voice on a huge stage. We can now have interesting conversations with people we never would have got the chance to interact with in the past in the 3D world. At the same time, I think it’s fair to say that a lot of bad habits have been picked up from social media. Everyone is entitled to give an opinion without much or any thought, and a common hobby seems to be trying to prove other people wrong for no apparent reason other than to be right. I’m not a fan of how these kind of interactions have seeped into conversation in the 3D world, changing the way people interact in real life. I may be making assumptions and linking two unconnected ideas, but to me it seems that now that unsolicited advice is the norm, there’s a lack of interest in real conversation. What happened to listening and being interested in what other people have to say? Hopefully I’m exaggerating. Or perhaps it was always like this.
An exchange I commonly witness goes something like this - Person A (let’s call her Trish) begins to tell a story. Person B (let’s call her Gail) interrupts and tells her own story without showing any interest in what Trish just said. So Trish has started a story. Gail has interrupted, and Gail’s story doesn’t appear to connect with what Trish’s. Now Trish is left wondering why she opened up in the first place. Five-year-old me would be holding my head in my hands (or something more five-year-old-like). Why tell your own story before you have understood the other person’s? Why change the topic of conversation to something else?
Another common aspect of this conversation style is when Gail decides that her goal is to prove Trish wrong. Gail doesn’t listen to what Trish says. Gail interrupts and changes the conversation, starting with, “Yeah, but …” and Trish is left confused. She was telling an anecdote about something that happened to her today; she wasn’t trying to make or win an argument. She didn’t ask for advice or opinions, so why has she received a counter argument and advice about something she didn’t say?
Trish knows there are so many things she could do next. She could tell Gail how she feels. She could listen to understand why Gail reacted the way she did. She could help Gail understand how it made her feel. But today Trish is tired. She doesn’t like the noise. She prefers another option instead - to simply not engage in conversation at this time. So that’s what she does. Maybe she’ll feel differently in the morning, but not today.
If you ever feel like Trish, you’ll know there are so many options for how to deal with a situation like this, and one of them is permission to not engage in conversation at this time. In this noisy world it can be easy to forget.
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