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Many people have forgotten how to have meaningful conversations. Every day we talk and exchange news, often even commenting on it when we arrive at work, with our colleagues, or even when we are with our friends or family. These small conversations, or those with little engagement, end up completely dominating our reality. The truth is that it is so rare for conversations that change us in some way to happen.
I found myself thinking about the retreat I did last August and the things that made it so special. And perhaps one of them was the depth of the topics discussed and the conversations I had.
It is very rare for us to have transformational conversations.
We need to bring a little more Socrates into our conversations.
And what does the Socratic method say? It is one of the techniques used to employ dialogue as a method of philosophical inquiry. In this method, the student is led to discover their own values and set of beliefs through a conversation led by the teacher. It is not so much like a “blank slate” where the teacher simply “inscribes” a new idea or concept. The teacher asks simple questions that lead the student to encounter some internal contradictions and ideas that are not yet consolidated in their mind.
There are two ways we can introduce this method into our conversations. Of course, there are many more ways, and if you want to suggest others by commenting on this post, I will be happy to read and comment on them, of course.
We should try to pursue a conversation to its conclusion. If someone presents us with an idea or an opinion, we should try to go further. We should not just listen and leave the conversation at that. Imagine that someone says something like, “Well, I believe that war is right.” We can ask more questions about that belief or idea. We should probe, ask questions, and examine.
The second point for achieving greater depth in conversations is to recognize that conversation is a way of thinking. It is very often a very important way of thinking. When two people sit down face to face to dissect an idea, or to consider the implications of a thought, something magical happens. Have you noticed? We are not just listening, nor are we just talking. There is a dialogue, an exchange of ideas, a dance of words and thoughts that elevates thinking. In fact, there is the collaborative effect of two minds looking at and observing a problem at the same time, but we also find that our own thought patterns will change. By externalizing an idea with another person and examining that same idea from an outside perspective, outside our own “mind,” we are led to think about it again, and in a different way.
Some of this magic happens when we are, for example, in a psychology consultation. The psychologist does not seek to give us the answer, but rather works with us to observe the idea, leading us to think about that idea, problem, or thought from a completely different perspective.
Often, the ideas we have and that are mulling over in our minds, when we verbalize them to another person, become almost palpable, and many of them fade away. In our minds, they would have too much importance and cloud our other thoughts. On the other hand, when we express an idea that we thought was very simple and almost insignificant, we realize that it actually has a big influence on our lives and can have a much greater impact on many more things we do, or even on how we think or define ourselves.
We all need good conversations because in good conversations we find something outside ourselves about ourselves! Good conversations also bring us one step closer to something that may resemble the truth a little more...
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