The Lost Art Of Conversation

By John McDonnell

My wife has cousins in Ireland, and they came to visit last week. We did some sightseeing, went out to a few restaurants, took them shopping.

Mostly, though, we just talked.

The Irish have a gift for talking. Words flow out of them with the ease of a river flowing downhill, and if you stop and ask directions of a stranger in Dublin, like we did last April when we visited, you’ll probably get a story along with the directions. Indeed, the cab driver who took us to the airport was as glib and expansive as a standup comedian.

Last week we spent a lot of time with the Irish relatives just sitting around the kitchen table, drinking tea and talking.

It reminded me of how little we do that in America these days. I don’t remember the last time my family sat around the kitchen table with anyone and just chatted. We’re always too busy to sit down, there are too many deadlines to meet, schedules to keep. My children don’t know what it’s like to talk without purpose, to simply talk for the sake of talking.

It wasn’t always this way. When I was a child in the 1950s and 60s my grandparents, aunts and uncles would regularly stop by our house and visit for awhile.

They would sit in the kitchen or the living room and talk. Conversation was something that was valued. The children sometimes took part, sometimes not. Even if we were too busy to sit and talk, we could still hear the conversation from wherever we were in the house. I remember many times being sent upstairs to do my homework, but instead sitting on the floor in the hallway listening to my aunt tell stories about her pals in the Notre Dame Subway Alumni, or my uncle and father talking about playing stickball in the street in South Philadelphia when they were boys during the 1930s.

There were arguments, too -- during the Vietnam War years there were raging arguments about whether we should be involved in that war, and during the Watergate years there were many heated discussions about Nixon’s crooked machinations. When John F. Kennedy died there was anger and sadness, but the conversation was a way for them to vent their feelings at a time of tragedy.

I learned a lot listening to those conversations. I learned about history, I learned about morality, I heard a few secrets that I wasn’t supposed to, I learned how to be part of a family, a community, how to be a human being.

I worry that my children are not learning those things.

Where is the art of conversation today? Is it flourishing through text-messaging, Facebook postings, e-mail, instant messaging? Technology lovers will tell you these social networking tools are a good thing, that they’re helping people to make connections, to stay in touch with folks who live far away, to reestablish ties with friends from long ago.

In a way that’s true; through Facebook and e-mail I’m reconnected with high school friends I lost touch with 25 years ago. It’s nice to chat with them online, but these short, truncated messages, a few sentences on a screen, are not the same as sitting down across from someone and talking with them for an hour or two. Social networking is good for short bursts of information, quick hits, an update or two. An in-person visit with someone is different. When you have time to relax and just chew the fat you never know where the conversation will lead. It can twist and turn, loop back on itself, strike off in new directions. You have time to tell a story that everyone’s heard before, without the fear of someone impatiently looking at his or her watch.

The Irish know this. They pay no attention to the world and its busy rush when they have a chance to talk. A story or an anecdote is worth taking time out of your day for. A visit and a chat are important things. Talking, just talking with no particular point or sales pitch or punch line to deliver, is a good thing in itself.

I miss those days in America.