REGAINING PERSPECTIVE

Great conversation is rare. It is rare precisely because it is so subjective. Its quality and color depend on your needs and interests at a particular moment in time more than on a set formula that, if followed, will reflect your ability to talk to others. And sometimes, you don’t even know what you need until you hear it.

Recently, that happened to me.

On a particularly interesting day, a day that leaned more towards the bad side of interesting than the good, a co-worker and I decided it would be best to get a drink. Neither of us really drink big people drinks, so getting a drink meant to us sitting in a comfortable place and milking our glasses of wine for hours. But the wine wasn't what we needed. In reality, what we needed was to have a casual conversation about nothing.

And that’s when it happened. We had never sat down together to talk like this before. The conversation was engaging, funny, at times surprisingly intimate and open, and often it was in flux from topic to topic. Just the way I like conversations to be. What made this conversation great, however, was a particular focus we returned to over and over: personal values.

The point is not that our values, save one, were more or less equivalent, but that we were able to talk about them unfalteringly. For me, hearing someone else speak of values with such unwavering confidence was refreshing and encouraging. The conversation reoriented me and gave me perspective in what has been a personally and privately turbulent time. Her strength has given me the courage to be indissoluble in me own needs.

Thanks, little t.



Downs - Copyright © 2005


(The painting above: Conversation - Pierre Borenave)