Conversations...

In any kind of relationship, how much conversation is enough. How do we put a measure to understand what is a qualifying conversation of a day?

You make a ritualistic 5 minutes call at home... Is that enough? Or an hour long phone call with your lover qualifies as 'enough' for the day? Or what if... there is no phone call. You chat... how do you quantify that?  How and from where do you count? Do you count the minutes, or the hours or the lines that you have written and received a response for?

Our conversations today are Diluted...!!!

We talk to our partners or the significant others without even understanding why is it necessary... Why do we get an urge to communicate? You wouldn’t die if you didn’t talk... We have all had those days where we were mad at each other over a trivial matter and we ended the day without a conversation... but here we are with our hearts perfectly beating and our lungs not skipping any of those beats to breathe.

But on the other hand we all had had a day when we spoke with someone throughout the day, but it didn’t feel as if we really TALKED and the day felt incomplete.

“Let’s meet over a coffee. I have loads to tell you” you would say to your bestie... “I can’t wait for him to come back so we can meet and talk” you would gape at your fiancé’s display pic on your phone and say that to yourself.

Why?

Oxford says that ‘conversation’ is where two or more people exchange news or ideas... but haven’t we come a long way from that?

And it got me thinking... why do we talk? And what are we trying to achieve. Our minds are sentient and conversations are their respite. We talk to know someone, to know something about that someone... to be aware or to distract self.

But how much of it is enough let’s say for a day? What is that extremely gratifying amount of ‘talk’ that will put your pacing mind to peace?

I don’t know how much sense it makes to the readers of this post but to me, conversation is directly proportional to one's probability of finding meaning in it. And yes that means a fulfilling conversation can still be of 5 minutes in 24 long hours, given you don’t squander those 5 minutes in talking about what to buy on this End of Reason sale on Myntra.

We all live in an environment where these meaningful conversation can easily be diluted by meaningless trivia that may not demand those 5 precious minutes of your chat/call/ or face to face interaction.

To really find an answer to these... think about some of the days when you slept with your mind and heart satisfied up to the hilt with a conversation. What was it about?

One such gratifying conversation I remember from my old days is more about the moment than the content of the talk. That day we lay for more than an hour, sharing funny anecdotes from our lives and laughing tears off our eyes. I can’t give up, let alone forget the image of that smiling face on the pillow next to mine. As romantic as it sounds, but it was more about the moment when our teary eyes finally shut with our hearts gratified to those moments of meaningless but momentous conversation.

Another that I can easily recall was when I stole 40 minutes at work and spoke to a friend all troubled with questions she couldn’t answer. Those 40 minutes started with a trembling voice asking “what do I do”, and ended with an assured one that sounded as if she had her feet strong on the ground and then.. She giggled!

Recalling these conversations and many others that I was fortunate to have, I have come to realise that there are some easy tricks to identify these meaningful qualifying conversations. And no, time spent in them is not a measure!

These easy allusions are:

• They end on giggle/ smile/ laughter or any such synonym that you know of these words. And the laughter is not posed but perfectly genuine.
• They result into an Assurance. Assurance of knowing someone or being known, assurance that they know better and can see brighter, understanding self better. Assurance that people understand and they are standing with you.
• They Bolster or Reinforce something. Reinforce your love for someone, expressing gratitude, strengthened relationship, bolster beliefs, or simply sharing the other side of the story.
• They end with ‘Something to look forward to’... tomorrow, day after or in the near future... simple phrases like “See you tomorrow, Can’t wait to tell you this...”

And as George Miller says... a human being can process only up to minimum 5 units of information, I close my message at 4.

Next time, when you want to find out if the conversation was a qualifying one, sit back and reflect for a moment. Did you end it smiling or make the other person laugh? Did this reassure him/her of something? Did you bolster the faith in your relationship or any belief that you talked about? Did it envisage something, anything?

If you could manage to do even one of it during the day with your partner, I am sure you wouldn’t need a qualifying measure for your conversations. J

-Pratishtha