This will be a relatively short post, but I am hoping that people will engage in the comment section for this one. I will start it off with a simple prompt.
Describe the most interesting conversation you were part of today.
See? That wasn't painful, was it?
Or was it?
I don't know these days, as at times, I feel like I might go days without having truly engaging conversations offline. Partly this is because most of the time I am working and only a few of the people I work with are interested in truly discussing things and, I don't get to talk to them often. But, at home I also feel that the discussion around the house is rather practical and doesn't dive into anything that is interesting.
It is all about schedules and illness, what to eat, clean, fix...
For me at least, most of the interesting conversations happen in two places and one of those places feels conceited to mention, because it is in my own head. No, I don't hear voices (other than my own), it is just that I spend quite a lot of time thinking about various aspects of life and my experience with it, which is also where all of my writing comes from. Which is the second place I tend to have more interesting conversations or at least, thought-provoking comments - where people engage with my thoughts through my writing and then, add their own experiences, perspectives and opinions.
I often write about how I think this society is becoming more disconnected from each other, but I am not sure if people actually feel it in the same way I do or, have any tangible evidence of it happening. However, I also think that if we review the conversations we have with each other, their topic, depth and level of trust and intimacy involved, we might be able to see proof of what we are missing, often craving.
I also think that while digital communication can be somewhat of a savior for many, it is likely a stop-gap measure that doesn't fully replace our human needs for quality interaction and relationship development. It is more like a filler food for our experience, but doesn't have all the nutritional value we need to live what we would under reflection, believe to be a good life, a valuable life, a life in which we mattered.
Perhaps it is just me?
Maybe I am just discontented with my own life and therefore feel that others are in the same boat, but I don't think this is at least the entire case. At least from a lot of my own experience, I know that some of my own acquaintances are indeed craving good conversation, personal connection, someone to not only talk to, but someone to also actually listen to what is being said and be part of the discussion, not just a sounding board.
Last week there was a conversation on a topic and I mentioned building valuable reference groups, which is something the rest of the people didn't really have in terms of a group of people who would help each other be better. Instead, there was the general consensus that rather than a reference group that would help each other be their best, it was a group they could compare themselves against and be looking to beat. instead. They saw it as a group to compete with, not a group to grow with.
So, another prompt:
Do you belong to a group who helps each other grow?
Oops, this is longer than I wanted it to be already.
But I wonder, since more and more people seem to be spending less time actually out and about with people who really know them, does the average person even have much opportunity to build a reference group? And, if these groups are more digital and online, are they as valuable, or is there a lack of transparency on various topics that lessens their effectiveness?
Right, I will leave it there and see what comments arise, but hopefully people are willing to discuss these things and perhaps even, make some next steps for themselves if they see opportunity to improve at least their own wellbeing, if not the wellbeing of others too.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
Describe the most interesting conversation you were part of today.
It was 8:10 in the morning and my home phone rang, yes, we have to have a hard line to get phone calls from the outside world. Some may think that is just awful not to be able to just text me, not talk, just punch out a few letters, bam done.
Text messages are great, really, but I like to hear a voice.
So, as I was saying, the phone rang this morning, and it was my #2 son.
His degree is in special education, he taught for ten years but decided to leave his job and be a stay-at-home dad for his three young children. Now seven years later, with the teacher shortage due to covid, he found an opportunity to go back to teaching.
He wanted to talk to me about some of the glitches that may keep him out still. The #1 thing was, could he earn enough to make him change the great routine with the kids, the security he felt knowing he was their caregiver.
Can I handle full time work and still get the kids where they needed to be for sports, school activities ect.? Will the chaos set in again?
Well with joy in his voice, which you don't get in texts, he told me he had been offered an excellent salary plus full benefits. Best part, he would be teaching in the same middle school he had attended as a boy. He felt right at home.
And He could start asap.
I was so happy for him, I laughed until I cried. He sounded so elated and proud of himself. Conversations don't get any better than that. When my children succeed, @thebigsweed and I feel successful too!
More happiness from farm-mom. Your joy is contagious!
That is such a lovely comment, thank you @owasco, nice to know you feel me.
That is fantastic news! Is he worried that going back to the same school to teach will lead him to smoke behind the bike shed again? 😅
After seven years, that is going to be a bit of a change in life routine, but perhaps it is a good time too - seven year itch and all, it seems to be a cycle.
I dont think it is possible to get landlines here now...
HaHa, no land lines? really. We would be lost without ours.
Yes I told him to just take one day at a time and will all work out. I do believe he is ready to get back, the kids are older now and with just a little help now and then, they will do just fine.
Please, I went to see the principals enough already with my 3 sons when they were young, now he can be the one to catch those kids up to no good, I am done!😟
Yeah, I think that some businesses still use them, but it has been many years since I have seen one in a residential house.
He knows all their tricks ;)
Talking with my brother in law and his wife about how prepared they are for their first kid, being born in the next 2 weeks, after 14 yearst of trying. A real Christmas Miracle.
I help people grow, but I am not a member of any group in the real life. Hope to change that in the next Hive-uk meeting on 15.12.2022.
Will @slobberchops attend this one?
no idea. they just put the post today, i do not know who is attending, just check my schedule and I have a day off then, so i am going.
Enjoy :)
No, it's a southern meet up.., too far for me.
Man, that is awesome! Congrats to them!
Two questions:
Do they think they are prepared?
Do you think they are prepared?
After 14 years, the are going to be in for quite a lifestyle shift :)
I think no one is prepared for the first one. But we learn fast, especially from our mistakes, right?
It is a pity we didn't have twins - the experiments I could have run!
I'm not in a group where help each others to grow but accidentally enter to a group where I find enemies whose destroy my encouragement to be a regular author in hive. Unfortunately I met people who only can pull down, can't help me grow up but with the time I'll accept all the bully and abuse. Your post is always interesting to me so I couldn’t stop myself commenting. Stay blessed sir! ❤️
What about in the real world, would a reference group help you in a practical sense?
Actually I'm a introvert type and unsocial in real life so I don't have such helpful group and I hide myself and stay away from more people as I feel unsafe to share my personal life, I met people who misuse of those information and manipulate according to their wish. Sorry about sharing such misfortune but still there is some specific individuals who help me not as a group but help me without expecting any kind of return. So I'm lucky on that way.
Being introverted doesn't mean you can't connect with people in the real world, though I don't recommend sharing too much personal with strangers anyway :)
I have a mentor friend for business where I learn so much and the conversations are generally interesting. Outside of that there are very few who make me even want to talk to them as they are all about their own little worlds and those are very small places which are generally boring. Sounding boards are good to have as they do help you develop, but using the wrong ones can also hinder any progress you might have had.
Having a business mentor is highly valuable for sure. At the company I woe at, they have a mentor program internally too, which seems to work well.
The wrong reference group can be equally harmful. Birds of a feather as they say though...
I saw quite a few people today as I went to the Rastro, a local Market where a friend of mine was giving a talk about personal freedom and after that there was a jam. I also got to hang with some of my favorite people.
I had a conversation with a couple, who recently bought a property. They are renting a house, as the land is not ready for them to live on. One of them seemed a bit stressed by the situation, so we spoke about embracing winter and this opportunity to really think about what they wanted on the land and take the time to design their ideal living space. To just slow down , so they don´t make any rushed decisions.
I am lucky that I am a part of a wonderful collective and I have definitely met my tribe with some of these people and we do support one another. We used to meet up regularly, now it is more spaced out but we all decided recently that we need to come together more often. Start sharing our skills again and focusing on helping each other grow xxx
How was the talk?
That sounds like an interesting conversation with the landowners for sure. I think these kinds of "random" interactions can have quite a profound effect on our own thinking and decisions, but we seem to have less of them now people bury their faces into a screen when out in public.
Hopefully you guys will actually take the steps to connect more again. I feel like it is one of the main ways to begin a grassroot fightback against the engineered disconnection.
Most interesting conversation?
Over our morning coffee, Mrs. D and I were revising our earliest Internet days, part of which involved a rather scholarly study of how the world was redefining the meaning of the word "here." This was circa 1992-95... and we were looking at what it actually "means" to say something like "I am IN a group" in a virtual context. Where is 'in," exactly?
This lead to talking a bit about a paper Mrs. D is currently working on, relating to trauma and processing emotions in the "texting generation." How do we interpret emotion when we only have text to look at, not an actual person who is giving us non-verbal cues, body language and more? And how is the ability to read body language being influenced in a generation that more often than not doesn't communicate in physical space?
Yes, we take things "lightly," around here...🤣
That sounds like an interesting conversation :)
I think that in the last 30 years, we have progressed not only into redefining "here" as a far less physical space, but actually making ourselves believe that a digital space is indeed a place. Tokenization is going to be massive for a reason.
These are topics that I am interested in too, as you likely are aware. In terms of the last one, go to a place where 15 year olds hang out and see them talk with each other. There is often almost no true eye contact, nothing intimate - they are always looking over each other's shoulders for the next thing of interest.
In terms of the influence of being able to read body language, I will throw an idea out there that I have considered a fair bit in terms of how gullible people have become. This is important because when you are unable to tell if someone is lying or not, the chances for getting into situations where there is violence or something like sexual abuse, goes up dramatically.
The only people I have spoken to today were fellow walkers along the river. One of the conversations was very brief, but it colored my day. My dog was off leash, and she ran up to a lone older woman. It's quite cold today, and the woman was all bundled up, as was I. I never know how people are going to react to my dog racing over to sit at their feet and await being petted, and I usually leash my dog if I see someone coming. But for some reason I didn't for this woman - she must have oozed positivity that I could feel a couple hundred feet away. She removed one of her gloves, bent down, and pet my sweet baby for quite a while. My dog, in her turn, was uncharacteristically well behaved, never once jumping up on her. As I approached, I said "Thank you for petting my puppy" and she said "I thoroughly enjoyed it!" with a huge smile and a loving look at me. As we passed each other on a walking trail along a beautiful river, seagulls swooping overhead, I felt the universe come a bit closer to pure love. That was that. Simple, the simplest thing of all, love.
Ah - see! This is a different kind of conversation and points toward the need for intimacy that we all feel, but rarely get fulfilled. In Finland, there has been studies done how elderly people go to stores for company, handing over change to get skin contact.
Life doesn't take much to be good, but I don't think we are doing enough for it.
Christmas ornaments went up today, so lots of back and forth between five of us over what should go where and which should wait out the season in a bin in the garage.
Yes, I lead an exciting life.
Wait out the season? Shouldn't they all go up, like at the Griswald's? :D
Since largely abandoning the office I dont get too many engaging convos outside. Family chats invariably involve lot of talk about kids and I don't see my friends half as much.
What a time to be alive...? :O)
Yeah, it is pretty depressing. I would like to get into the office more, just for a chat, but schedules and illness haven't allowed it. I haven't been out of the house other than to take the bin and a trip to the grocery store in over two weeks...
WE have had some throat illness thing going around and around our house for about the same time. I think I am going a little stir crazy.
So crazy I am actually looking forward to our Christmas night out which is usually absolute shite
What does a "christmas night out" entail?
It's the main office one where everyone goes. Therefore it is a fraught ragbag of an evening involving much drunkenness from senior people who rarely drink but decide to let go a tad because it's Christmas - there will invariably be a fight between some rutting stags and some girls crying that they love mark, they pure fucking love im but he won't leave his wife
Ooft, I feel like it has already happened 🤣
Most interesting conversations are online with people I don’t know in real life.
There may be two people where we often have debates on a lot of topics. One of them follows mainstream all the time, and I think the person is too trusting, and to no surprise the person thinks I spend too much time reading conspiracies.
I am considered the "conspiracy nut" in the IRL group - yet, time has generally proven me right - people focus too short.
Didn’t we just have an exchange on your other post? 😁
One of my former boss is someone who encourages people to think outside of the box, the years we spent together was very helpful to see the world for what it really is.
Nowadays I pay it forward, whomever is willing to think, I will guide them.
And that in part inspired this post! :D
It can be a hard road and comes with a lot of criticism, but occasionally, some people actually listen, learn and then start to think for themselves.
As many people around me have a monoton lifestyle, it is difficult to have interesting conversations with them. I can discuss subjects from recent events to even cryptos only with a few friends.
Yeah, it is a strange world some seem to inhabit - a life of not very much, yet they seem to think it is full. I don't really get it :)
When my wife and I drank morning coffee, I told her about Vanga's predictions. We talked about predictions. Why did not a single psychic give accurate information about at least one space object (before its discovery). But there were predictions that came true for specific people. It is very strange. If, nevertheless, there is a higher mind and it sometimes gives us clues, then it does not give our civilization explicit clues about the material Universe.
I read vagina... and then had to re-read :D
What if like a pubescent teen who can dream a simulation of what sex would be like without much prior knowledge, the brain does the same for the soothsayers - they take various parts of reality and the brain puts it into something it can comprehend.
))
I think the point is not in the brains of soothsayers, often they themselves do not understand what they are talking about, like the holy fools in antiquity. Probably there is a channel for transmitting information. But he is very strange. Through these people there are facts of correct predictions to people, but there is no scientific information. I used to think that people believe in predictions, and then unconsciously adjust their lives to them. But no, it's something else.
It is an interesting area and I wonder if it is "a glitch in the matrix", like an exploit that lets some people see through walls.
Yes, that's the first thing that comes to mind. I'm sad if this is true. I don't want to believe it.
Maybe this is why it is more likely to be true - our beliefs might hide the truths.
Now a days no one is sincere with you. Everyone needs benefits from you and go. Your family member brothers and sisters always here for your tough and difficult time. I always share my happiness and problems with him. Thanks for sharing your experience.
I think everyone always wanted benefits, but now it has become more material in nature.
Yeah bro you are right 👍
people seek opportunities to improve their own well-being rather than discussing issues
Maybe that is part of the issue? We are a social species after all.
Groups to grow with values and principles are a blank page to write daily about the how, to be able to shake hands, to forget personal ambitions in order to be all one and enjoy the growth in life.
In a group, it is very healthy to set limits. And little by little, without any hurry, let life pass by. Everyone is busy with their own process.
In my real life, I am a volunteer in a support group, and it is a palpable lack of interest and I don't care at all levels. Online I have no group, but I do have 3 mentors whom I respect and admire.
Everyone is busy, aren't they? It makes it hard for anyone to connect. I wonder if this is part of the issue too, where no one has time to spend time together.
I agree with you, where intimacy and topics should be paid attention to in chats, not everyone feels comfortable and not everyone can also be invited to compromise, the enemy in the blanket is real
But, those who live in fear, will never be about to live in love :)
Yaa, that's right, and something beautiful does require a struggle
Funny how it is often the case - not much good comes easy.
Very good content 👌
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The most interesting convo I had was about the elections in my country. It's always interesting to talk about cause we have a lover of the people on the ballot this time. And, the plans a friend of mine shared with regard to furthering his education.
I almost always have interesting conversations with people I barely know too, because if you have nothing important or interesting to say, I'd not even entertain you in the first place.
Group? Naa. I don't even know of any.
My yesterday's post received a few comments. That almost never happens. Seems like a miracle.
Both those comments were about the same game but one person was way more positive. It almost seems like they played a different games... I guess a different perspective really changes things.
Statistically unlikely that you're the only one ;D
I feel like communication itself rather than the medium is the actual problem. From personal experience it doesn't seem to matter whether it's online or in person, some people seem to think a "conversation" is them talking and everyone else listening, and they get put out and disinterested when other people want to say anything, and debates/arguments are about who can scream down the other person the loudest and shut them down and throw insults when they're out of points/proven wrong, because that somehow makes you "more right" and then you "win"?
What are you classing as a "group"? Is one other person with you making a group of two enough? Does it need to be 10+ people? Is it just the people you know collectively even if they are generally their own disparate groups?
Many such groups when I was younger. Isolated to a great degree, now. Secretly building my own growth up so that I can help others later is how I'd like to think of my current path of development. Doing what needs to be done, wants are on Pause. Daydreaming of starting various clubs locally...yet taking no steps, yet. Some significant, obviously prevailing, level of uncertainty still hanging in the air...
Conversations? Too many today. They need to calm down a bit.