The Art of Conversation - Catherine Blyth [2]
Networking is part of conversation’s value, although the word sounds chilly and strategic. Conversation is something bigger: It is the spontaneous business of making connections, whether for work, friendship, or pure, fleeting pleasure.
Some writers have argued that it’s where the raw stuff of life is spun into art. Speech—the gift of provoking thoughts in others’ minds by rapidly modulated outtakes of breath—is certainly a wonder, and conversation a miracle upon that miracle. Indeed, if evolutionary psychologists are right, it fathered language, out of grooming, the conversation of apes, when our ancestors sat about picking off fleas, flirting, working out who was boss.
But I find simpler reasons to treasure it. Get on with others, you will get on in life, and enjoy it more. Good talkers get dates, win contracts. They make job interviews fun, whichever side of the desk they are on. Furthermore, the qualities of a satisfying chat—vitality, clarity, wit, relish, tact, a light touch—are the same as we want of the people around us. Respect the rules of artful conversation and not only are you on your way to being a better person, but learn to steer discussion, to entertain not dominate, and you’re on the road to power.
Conversation is brilliant at both polishing thoughts and frothing up new ones, and although professionalism encourages us to wring the maximum from meetings in minimum time, serendipity produces many of the best ideas. Since information flows better through stories than through year-end reports, censoring gossip—whether at the water cooler or on email—can dull a business’s cutting edge.
Just as monarchs had their favorites and Arab rulers their salaried nadim (“cup companions”) with whom to trade jokes and keep track of the court’s mood, not to mention boost their own, so productivity and morale shot up when a Puerto Rican tobacco company started paying a cigar roller the same hourly rate to down tools, sit in the middle of the work area, read papers aloud, chatter, and clown.
There are other benefits. Paul McCartney loves talking as well as crooning to audiences because “I remember stuff that I’d forgotten for thirty years in explaining it.” Holocaust survivor Alice Herz-Sommer, a 103-year-old concert pianist, would agree. Asked about her fizzing social life, she confided she wasn’t avid to hear about “lives and problems” purely out of altruism or curiosity: “This is good for the brain . . . better than a hundred pills.”
How come she was so skilled at conversation? “Chamber music is a discussion with your partner. You have to listen.”
More than words, conversation is music: Its harmony, rhythm, and flow transcend communication, flexing mind and heart, tuning us for companionship.
It doesn’t have to be grave to supply life’s turning points. When a young worker at Mother Teresa’s Home for the Dying in Calcutta, novelist Jeffrey Eugenides was toying with taking up holy orders. But he couldn’t work out why he lacked the spirit of his nice, somewhat oatmealy fellow volunteers. Until one day, strolling with a non-volunteer, he rediscovered something they had not: humor.
A beggar approached and Eugenides spurted a piety:
I said, “Jesus said that whoever asks of you, you should give something.” And my friend said, “Well, obviously Jesus has never been in Calcutta.”
Eugenides laughed, then quit.
At around six I had the most important conversation of my life, with a social worker who wanted to know how my sister and I would feel about another sibling. In the excitement beforehand, planning what to say, fantasizing about being a mini-Mum—painting an alphabet frieze in this new child’s bedroom, reading her stories, teaching her words—on some level, I realized that just talking could change a life, all our lives—or not, if this conversation didn’t work out. But it did, and we adopted Heidi.
And random collisions mean the world. A drunken chat with a writer transformed my love