The world is full of talkers. They talk about anything and everything (and mostly themselves) and they can talk A LOT. Unfortunately what's been lost in the blah blah of this talking noise is what I'll refer to as, the art of conversation. Rarely do I find a person in my generational category who can carry on a decent conversation and it seems to only be getting worse. (As if that were possible.) These days its all about one-upping one another with a better story than the previous. Or worse, it's listen to me, me, me talk about me, me, me and all the wonderful, amazing, *insert verb*, things I do. Me, Me, ME! My, my, MY! Blah, blah, BLAH! No questions, no comments- just right on to talking over whoever was brave enough to try and say something. It's a Darwinian-scheme of whoever can talk the loudest and the most, wins and quite frankly I threw in the towel before the starting gun even fired.
A conversation, per my definition, is a shared discussion. Person A makes a comment where then Person B accepts the comment, adds a sentiment and shares another piece of commentary thereby passing the conversation back to Person A and repeat. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary backs my ideas about conversation with it's definition: (1): an oral exchange of sentiments, observations, opinions, or ideas. Please note the word "exchange"; i.e. share. Passing the conversation back and forth and round and round we go. This my friends, is where my generation has completely missed it. We're not exchanging anything anymore, we're simply talking for the sake of warding off silence.
Is silence our forbidden fruit? Because to be honest, I savor every moment of silence I can get in this busy, buzzing world and I suggest you do the same.
To continue my point (and also negate it somewhat (...the irony)); I often find myself completely zoning out the majority of what someone is saying once it goes past my 30-second listening limit. I only offer the obligatory "oh"'s and "uh huh"'s to fake the person into believing I actually care what they're saying. And it's not that I'm above it....I just have no interest in whatever words you are throwing at me just to prove you know how to use words...and lots of them.
My point is, if I'm zoning out on someone else's monologue then most certainly they are zoning out on mine. Why not just save everyone some time (and boredom) and just savor the silence.
