I listened with great interest to an interview with Theodore Zeldin, one of the most important thinkers in the world, & author of “Conversation: How Talk Can Change Our Lives” at http://www.wamu.org/ram/2002/k2021118.ram.
Here are some goodies I picked up …
1. Telling lies causes us to live in a illusion – and conversations can help us spot it. It takes a lot of honesty and vulnerability to have meaningful conversations.
2. Making a Map of our conversations helps us see the diversity of our learning and growing – Zeldin gave the analogy of a travel map which got me thinking who I had been talking to. No wonder I enjoy my toastmaster club meetings, it’s one place I get some diverse views.
3. Conversations can help us move beyond knowledge to wisdom – with so much information bombarded on us, I agree with Zeldin that wisdom is what we really need and how knowledge applies in our lives and make us better people. Conversations to me provides a level playing field for us to allows for healthy exchange and a great lab for change.
4. Conversation needs practice (like love making!!!!) – that got the listeners sitting up! I sometimes assume just because I have no problem talking I’m good at conversation. But this got me thinking, it involves listening, understanding, and interacting .. much more than knowing what to say.
5. Conversation is a work of art … have fun (e.g. humor) & still do something with our own lives – Zeldin talked about humor sometimes can be a way of evading the real issues at hand. Hmm .. I enjoy humor .. maybe that’s why my wife May Chin is good at meaningful conversations – she jokes less (almost never actually)!
6. “What is your idea of _______”? – That was a good way of getting to deeper conversations of what’s in people’s minds and their feelings to “whatever”. I was thinking of a recent conversation with Langkawi and wondering why I enjoyed it so much. It was simply because there was a freedom to go beyond the usual, what’s you job? what do you like? where did you come from? …
Found a quote on the net …
“Conversation is a meeting of minds with different memories and habits. When minds meet, they don’t just exchange facts: they transform them, reshape them, draw different implications from them, engage in new trains of thought. Conversation doesn’t just reshuffle the cards: it creates new cards. “~ Theodore Zeldin
From now on I don’t want to give TALKS >. I want to enter CONVERSATIONS …
hmm .. must look for the book …
