The Nature of Good Conversation

I've been thinking more lately about the nature of good conversation. Aside from interesting and stimulating content in an engaging talk, I am curious about what makes the process of a good conversation rich. It was somewhat elusive to me before, but now, I think I've noticed a few things about it.

First, I think good conversation consists of each person truly "getting" the other person comprehensively and repeatedly. This happens less frequently than people think. A lot of people think they understand others when they really don't. The test of whether or not one is understood is not feedback from the understander, but from the one being understood. And the way us human beings are made is that when we are repeatedly not understood, it can be very draining. It is not merely a matter of cognitively apprehending the other person's mental contents, but having the other person feel understood. Being misunderstood for a few moments in a conversation is bearable, but when we are misunderstood (or not greatly understood) for a whole extended conversation, it can be very draining. But good conversationalists make it their priority to understand the other person, and ask for clarification when needed. Understanding the other person's thoughts and feelings and feeding it back in a personalized way is like a tennis partner hitting the ball back in a stimulating rally. If your partner repeatedly does not, it is dry.

The second thing about good conversation is that there is a somewhat mysterious back and forth flow to it that both people can smoothly catch on and "vibe" to. There is an unspoken sense of rhythm that both people need to intuit and "dance" to. When a conversation flows, things are smooth, natural, effortless, and almost silk-like. This is something that cannot be taught, at least fully, from textbooks. It is similar to how one cannot teach good spontaneous hip-hop dancing fully from textbooks. It has to be caught. One of the practical things I've learned about the nature of flow is that self-consciousness just suffocates it. If a person repeatedly harasses themselves with the thought "Am I doing this right? Am I doing this wrong?" it completely extinguishes the life of organic flow that flourishes in spontaneity. I've observed that even if people are well-intentioned but their conversational rhythm is abrupt, forced, awkward, and "off-step", it can be sustainable for a while out of courtesy, but draining if carried out in an extended duration.

The third thing that makes a conversation really good is simply authenticity. One does not need to engage in extreme all-or-nothing thinking here in the sense that one is either completely deceitful and fake or completely an open book divulging one's most vulnerable secrets. One can just be intentional about not being deceptive. For example, if something is too personal, one can be up front about not feeling comfortable talking about details but not be fake about one's thoughts or feelings on the matter. Informed concealment is not deception. Tricking the other person about what is behind the curtain, though, is fake. The world is full of deception, and at the end of the day, our souls are just attracted to authentic things in life. So when we finally come across someone who is authentic, it is a breath of fresh air to the soul.

Oh, how we hunger for good conversation!