Thanks for stopping by what is generally a quiet corner of the world.

Before we can find our way into conversations of substance, we’ve got to have a point of view about what makes a conversation substantive. At least, that’s what I realized after I read your comment and started to form an answer. It’s one of those big “meaning of life” questions that creep up on you.

My favorite “meaning of life” surprise question moment came in a brief respite from all-out war during a rancorous divorce I went through in my early 30’s. I’d moved out and we were fighting in our old kitchen one night after I’d come to visit the kids. Want a conversation of substance? Those felt like they were filled with substance…the kind of strung-out epic battles where language can’t capture the intensity of your feeling. We’d gotten to a quiet moment and I was sitting on an oak kitchen chair, waiting in the silence for the moment to leave the house. She looked at me and asked in a weak, panicked voice, “Do you think we’ll get into heaven after this?” I looked at her wondering if I had heard right. “You believe heaven?” I asked. Her gaze hardened. “Yes. Don’t you?”

Well, no, I don’t, and certainly didn’t right then when I was living my own private hell. But that was the entry to a real conversation of substance, one that we should have had a long time before then, and the fact that we didn’t was itself a damning artifact of the personal wreckage we’d labored to create.

So, I want to think a little about the question of conversations of substance — which is a fair question — and I’ll see whether it leads to something that feels like it can stand writing out. I’ll ping you if I write it.

I’m piqued by your distinction between deep and casual connections, and its implication in your framework of choices, as touched on in your post.

My bias is that we make efficient choices about our time and our emotional energy, and that so long as we are experiencing growth in our life — an important test of emotional and spiritual well-being — then we should look to our choices as signals of what to pursue and what to abandon.

A superficial application of that thesis to your statement suggests that those relationships that you have deemed casual are relationships where you haven’t felt inclined to expend the time and emotional energy required to maintain them. Years later, curiosity breathes life into the memory of the relationships; the natural curiosity that makes us want to flesh out the context of our personal story, and makes us aware of the multitude of stories that have intersected our lives as we’ve gone along.

Facebook is an interesting petri dish for testing the validity of this premise. Get reconnected with assorted people who you’ve crossed paths with at critical moments in your life; tab through their photos, skim their friends, share a few wall posts or e-mails; travel through time and encounter an early release of your Self; and then the energy of discovery ebbs. Because, there’s a lot of life that’s left to live ahead, a lot of new releases of your Self that need to continue to get worked on, and a lot of stories that are rich and precious in the moment.

Your group sounds like an interesting salon. A challenge, I would imagine, is bringing together people who can keep the conversation on the ground. What kind of topics do you select? How do you select them? And how do you manage the meetings of the group?

Not only is it hard to find people to talk to, it’s hard to know what matters enough to talk about.

Thanks for stopping by what is generally a quiet corner of the world.

Before we can find our way into conversations of substance, we’ve got to have a point of view about what makes a conversation substantive. At least, that’s what I realized after I read your comment and started to form an answer. It’s one of those big “meaning of life” questions that creep up on you.

My favorite “meaning of life” surprise question moment came in a brief respite from all-out war during a rancorous divorce I went through in my early 30’s. I’d moved out and we were fighting in our old kitchen one night after I’d come to visit the kids. Want a conversation of substance? Those felt like they were filled with substance…the kind of strung-out epic battles where language can’t capture the intensity of your feeling. We’d gotten to a quiet moment and I was sitting on an oak kitchen chair, waiting in the silence for the moment to leave the house. She looked at me and asked in a weak, panicked voice, “Do you think we’ll get into heaven after this?” I looked at her wondering if I had heard right. “You believe heaven?” I asked. Her gaze hardened. “Yes. Don’t you?”

Well, no, I don’t, and certainly didn’t right then when I was living my own private hell. But that was the entry to a real conversation of substance, one that we should have had a long time before then, and the fact that we didn’t was itself a damning artifact of the personal wreckage we’d labored to create.

So, I want to think a little about the question of conversations of substance — which is a fair question — and I’ll see whether it leads to something that feels like it can stand writing out. I’ll ping you if I write it.

I’m piqued by your distinction between deep and casual connections, and its implication in your framework of choices, as touched on in your post.

My bias is that we make efficient choices about our time and our emotional energy, and that so long as we are experiencing growth in our life — an important test of emotional and spiritual well-being — then we should look to our choices as signals of what to pursue and what to abandon.

A superficial application of that thesis to your statement suggests that those relationships that you have deemed casual are relationships where you haven’t felt inclined to expend the time and emotional energy required to maintain them. Years later, curiosity breathes life into the memory of the relationships; the natural curiosity that makes us want to flesh out the context of our personal story, and makes us aware of the multitude of stories that have intersected our lives as we’ve gone along.

Facebook is an interesting petri dish for testing the validity of this premise. Get reconnected with assorted people who you’ve crossed paths with at critical moments in your life; tab through their photos, skim their friends, share a few wall posts or e-mails; travel through time and encounter an early release of your Self; and then the energy of discovery ebbs. Because, there’s a lot of life that’s left to live ahead, a lot of new releases of your Self that need to continue to get worked on, and a lot of stories that are rich and precious in the moment.

Your group sounds like an interesting salon. A challenge, I would imagine, is bringing together people who can keep the conversation on the ground. What kind of topics do you select? How do you select them? And how do you manage the meetings of the group?

Not only is it hard to find people to talk to, it’s hard to know what matters enough to talk about.

The mistake I was referring to was not respecting, or even acknowledging, those connections I made through work early in my career. I just didn’t see the point. I do have connections with friends from grade school, and college, as those were deep and substantive, and it made sense to me. But there was a cliff — anything not deep and intense didn’t seem worthy of effort. Which I do think is, and, was mistake. We need deep connections with other people, but casual ones too. I generally suck at maintaining the casual ones

But challenge your post raised in my mind is how hard it is for most adults to find other people they can comfortably have substantive conversations with. It’s really quite hard, at least here in America. It’s so easy to offend, so easy to find people who mostly want to talk about themselves, so easy to find people who prefer not to listen but to tell what you’re doing wrong or give you advice. The art of conversation is mostly lost I think, or mostly never even mastered.

I run a group called the Socrates Cafe, which is vaguely an attempt to provide a place for people to discuss big things. A place that’s friendly, safe, open, but wise, smart and challenging too. These groups have been popular, in part, because I think there are few places people really feel safe to talk about what they *really* think or how they really feel.

Love to hear your advice on how to seek conversations of substance, over the superficial.

The mistake I was referring to was not respecting, or even acknowledging, those connections I made through work early in my career. I just didn’t see the point. I do have connections with friends from grade school, and college, as those were deep and substantive, and it made sense to me. But there was a cliff — anything not deep and intense didn’t seem worthy of effort. Which I do think is, and, was mistake. We need deep connections with other people, but casual ones too. I generally suck at maintaining the casual ones

But challenge your post raised in my mind is how hard it is for most adults to find other people they can comfortably have substantive conversations with. It’s really quite hard, at least here in America. It’s so easy to offend, so easy to find people who mostly want to talk about themselves, so easy to find people who prefer not to listen but to tell what you’re doing wrong or give you advice. The art of conversation is mostly lost I think, or mostly never even mastered.

I run a group called the Socrates Cafe, which is vaguely an attempt to provide a place for people to discuss big things. A place that’s friendly, safe, open, but wise, smart and challenging too. These groups have been popular, in part, because I think there are few places people really feel safe to talk about what they *really* think or how they really feel.

Love to hear your advice on how to seek conversations of substance, over the superficial.