Conversation

I have been lately a bit sluggish with my writing and I can not even say that I was too busy. Just nothing seemed important enough to write about. Maybe my observations did not bring any interesting subject, or maybe I was preoccupied with thoughts that topic to write about. So I’ll write again about this great book A Little Life.

It has taken me a long time to read it. It provides me with plenty of subjects to reflect on and I take time to ponder on many that particularly resonate with me and relate to my life. The book has a great story, the story that mesmerizes and keeps readers spellbound. One can read it just for the story itself and love it. However, for people who have reflective nature the book may be much more than just a story. It may give an opportunity to see certain things more clearly or see them from a new perspective. This is how it works for me. I have rethought and better understood many important issues while reading the book.  I sometimes think that the book was not necessarily written for the story itself, but that the story provided a canvas on which to paint analysis, reflections and even solutions to important life subjects.

The following fragment for example:

“Relationships never provide everything. They provide you with some things. You take all the things you want from a person – sexual chemistry, let’s say, or good conversation, or financial support, or intellectual compatibility, or niceness, or loyalty – and you get to pick three of those things, Three – that’s it. Maybe four, if you are very lucky. The rest you have to look for elsewhere. It’s only in the movies that you find someone who gives you all of those things. But, this isn’t the movies. In the real world, you have to identify which three qualities you want to spend the rest of your life with, and then you look for these qualities in another person. That’s real life. Don’t you see it’s a trap? If you keep trying to find everything to find everything, you’ll wind up with nothing.”

Very nice and systematic. A planner in me loves it.  I wish I had such clarity earlier on. It would have saved me from frustration, criticism of my partners and some life disappointments. It is difficult to decide on the three most important things. For me it would be: loyalty, conversation and kindness. I would also like to add appreciation of beauty if I was to be that extra lucky to have four of the things in one person. This is a choice of an older person. Such choices loving parents made when arranging marriages of their children. They were wise choices that guaranted longer lasting marital bliss than initial infatuation, characteristic for marriages made out of love. Not that I advocate arranged marriages, they have their own problems sometimes boarding on breaking human rights. So what’s my point here? I think I lost it a bit, but this temporary confusion brings me to “conversation” I want to explore.

I like this definition of conversation – Talk between two or more people in which thoughts, feelings, and ideas are expressed, questions are asked and answered, or news and information is exchanged.

Conversation as a value, mentioned in the fragment of the book, is actually very important to me. It has been important for quite some time even if recently I did not think much about it. Provencal Conversation by Stella Bowen has been one of my favourite paintings, mainly for its subject. Four people engrossed in conversation.  To me it depicts an absolute bliss of friendship and exchange of thoughts.

                                          

Maybe I even blog for wanting to have some sort of conversation. I know, it is mostly one sided, but it happens that my views are challenged forcing me to think more, sometimes I have to change my views, sometimes I have a warm feeling that my views are shared by someone I will not likely ever meet in person.

Type of conversation I like best is a meaningful one, conversation that brings new ideas, maybe even answers to what is it all about, but just a chat is also great especially if houmor and sharp repartees are a part of it. In the recent few days I had some great and memorable conversations. One over a meal and Sangiovese catching up on news and finding out what is going on in Sydney. I may have missed the exhibition of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera if it was not for this particular conversaion. The idea of Camino got also woken up. Who knows, maybe not too late to dream about it?

Talking to another friend the other day, we were really gossiping a bit. I had some question marks over a particular subject. We did not reach any conclusion but a couple of day later the subject became clear to me, I found a solution! Even if it was a delayed reaction, it was a product of this good conversation.