On Great Conversations

The poet and author John O’Donohue shares thoughts on great conversation:

When is the last time that you had a great conversation? A conversation which wasn’t just two intersecting monologues, which is what passes for conversation a lot in this culture. But when had you last a great conversation in which you overheard yourself saying things that you never knew you knew, that you heard yourself receiving from somebody words that absolutely found places within you that you thought you had lost and a sense of an event of a conversation that brought the two of you on to a different plain, and then fourthly, a conversation that continued to sing in your mind for weeks afterwards.

I think there are a few traits of great conversations:

• Hours feel like minutes. We’re both in a state of flow and before we know it, hours have past since the conversation started.
• I say things I never knew I knew, or haven’t said before. These conversations feel like I’m uncovering things about myself.
• The progression of the conversation isn’t linear but goes down a ton of rabbit holes.