Ages ago I had a friend who was one of the most intelligent people I knew. He wasn't necessarily over-the-top freakishly smart, he was just well read in a lot of subjects, and I imagine now, having some perspective, that he just paid attention to people and experiences. In any case, he was one of my favorite people to talk to. We would get together after work, order some coffee and then just talk and talk for hours. Any topic I threw at him he would easily take up- music, classic movies, books, Philosophy, History. It's safe to say, at the time my scope was fairly limited, so the fact that he could do that may not have been a big deal at all, but it seemed like a big deal to me and I loved picking his brain. Often, a lot of what he said was over my head, I'm not going to lie, but that was okay because it pushed me to go out after our talks and look stuff up, to learn more. He never made me feel dumb and he always encouraged me to ask questions and to freely give my opinion, even when I disagreed. It was delicious bliss. I was aware of it then, but I know it even more now because I've not been able to have those kinds of conversations with anyone since him. I miss them desperately.
I miss talking to people. Maybe it's the head space I'm currently in, or maybe it's an actuality, but I feel that lately, very few people- or at least my friends- really talk. People talk at me, but there's seldom any give and take. Thanksgiving at my house this year was an especially eye-opening and frustrating experience. It was a gathering mostly of friends and family within my age, and despite trying to ban cell phones at the table, they still managed to come out once or twice. When there was conversation (primarily amongst the males in the room) it was about Youtube videos they'd all watched. It was literally a recounting of videos they'd seen, one after the other, ad nauseam. As soon as dinner was over and the cell phone ban was lifted, they were rushing to pull up the videos so we could all watch them. And I wanted to tear my hair out. I quite literally wanted to cry because I am so starved for genuine conversation. Books, movies, restaurants, travel, hell even politics which I hesitate to discuss in a mixed group. I don't care, I just want to talk. I want to hear other people's thoughts and ideas and give some of my own. Do people still do that?
Now I've become hyper-sensitive to the whole thing and have become rather foul-tempered when anyone tries to tell me about the last video they saw on Youtube. Maybe I wouldn't be if I had some outlet for conversation but I don't. I really don't. And I am frustrated as hell. I am not especially brilliant, sadly, and I don't necessarily have deep thoughts, but I do read a lot. I travel and get out locally as much as possible and every now and then it'd be nice just to exchange thoughts and ideas with other people. Is that too much to ask?
