The other day I was having a conversation with a friend, in
France and in French. I noticed a little while into the conversation that I was
struggling more than usual with my vocabulary. Am I tired? Is it the wine? But
no, I realized we were talking about things that we had never really discussed
before- and so I was being challenged to find words and put together ideas that
were not in my current repertoire.
So this made me wonder two things. The first: do we always
talk about the same things? Are we always going over the same subjects on
different days as time goes on and on? (how boring)
And the second: when I’m having conversations with friends
or family in English, my native language, do we also limit ourselves to certain
subjects? Limiting our vocabulary and our education by sticking with the same
subjects and formats and stories? This would be less noticeable because we
don’t question our understanding of our native languages, but it is no less
dismaying.
I think that both are probably true. After all, once we know
each other there is less searching and wondering. We learn from each other at
the beginning and then become part of each others worlds, thus absorbing their
vocabulary and their subject matter. If the people in our lives are not very
different from us, we don’t have to stretch our minds very far to meet them. If
we encounter someone very different it can often be intimidating to have a
conversation with them because we can’t participate at the beginning. We have
to listen first, and learn.
So we can either stay in a comfort zone of similar people carrying
on similar conversations, or we can seek out new people with different
experiences and different vocabularies and different conversations. By doing
the later, you learn and absorb and are enriched. But you have to be willing to
ask questions, to not know everything, to be vulnerable.
But what you get from it is the gratification of a new
friend, a new perspective, and new conversation to share with an old friend.
from emerson on transcendentalism
"A man's power to connect his thought with its proper symbol, and so to utter it, depends on the simplicity of his character, that is, upon his love of truth and his desire to communicate it without loss."
