On Conversation

Many years ago I said to my friend, “Have a nice day,” and he responded, “Don’t tell me what to do!” I think that perhaps he spoke in a spirit of jocularity, but I am wondering this morning if there wasn’t perhaps some pique and even some wisdom in his remark. Why do we say “Have a nice day, evening or event”? What command is explicit in the utterance? There exists  variant expression that appears to convert the command into a request: “I hope you have a nice day,” but I think the effect is the same.

These perfunctory phrases are another example of meaningless conversation that serves to avoid real contact. They are not a lubricant to conversation because the response to it is unnecessary and cannot be contradicted: “No, I won’t have a nice day.” I do remember Reginald Perrin’s response to his wife’s wish that he have a nice day at the office: “I won’t,” he responds, but she smiles and closes the front door behind him. Their ritual practice is habit and its meaning can only be known by an understanding of the statement’s context. Little can be understood without an awareness of context and superficial conversation knows little.  The words seem to me both an attempt to assert control—I command that you have a nice day— or an acknowledgement that the world is contingent—I hope you have a nice day but it is possible you won’t probably through no fault of your own. The opposite sentiment of course is always possible: “Have a miserable day, evening or event,” and the related “I hope you have a miserable day, evening or event” but I think that might be a phrase one might not proffer except perhaps sotto voce or behind closed doors.

            I have become suspicious of cursory conversation. Like a balloon it is full of air and like Sally Brown who when asked what her balloon does says it doesn’t do anything. I turn again to Thoreau as comfort and direction. “We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other.” He says, “If we would enjoy the most intimate society with that in each of us which is without, or above, being spoken to, we must not only be silent, but commonly so far apart bodily that we cannot possibly hear each other’s voice in any case.” Too many would avoid such intimacy. Speech, Thoreau avers, is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing.

Over the years I have often referred to Gregory Bateson’s suggestion in Steps to an Ecology of Mind that most conversation takes place as an attempt to avoid a fight. Actually, what he says is that “Most conversations are only about whether people are angry or something. They are busy telling each other that they are friendly—which is sometimes a lie.” Much conversation, then, avoids honest engagement in the effort to avoid disquiet, embarrassment, or anger. Conversation has the power to cause anxiety and therefore often remains anodyne. It is polite, innocuous, inoffensive, and not meant to communicate very much at all. Conversation enacts a carefully defended presence but often that conversation does not constitute a substance. It is not meant to communicate anything so much as it is designed to alleviate or even avoid personal dis-comfort and social tension. There is much we don’t want to know or say. Thorau declares that there are many fine things we cannot say if we have to shout! We step about in our colloquies with caution and restraint as a means to protect our willed ignorance. Much conversation insists on the answer and eschews the question: whatever interchange occurs is declarative and definitive and spoken in a cool, detached tone. I believe that there may often occur a polite exchange of pleasantries that would serve to maintain the calm though leave little opportunity for empathy—by which I mean a careful listening—or for a caring, which might be known as sympathy. Too much conversation, or what might be referred to as talk, attempts to avoid communication and intimacy. Arguments erupt from conversation when alternative versions of events are presented as fact rather than as vision; or when a movie or book review is offered as conclusive rather than as perspective; or when the fault, dear Brutus, is asserted to be never in ourselves but in our stars. Winnicott reminds me that it is madness to insist on being believed.

In the attempt to avoid the quarrel, many topics are usually avoided. Much of what we say encourages our invisibility. Bateson suggests to me that much conversation becomes defensively perfunctory and too often reveals that sincere interest in self and in other is in short supply. Politics and religion except among those who already agree in these matters is a most dangerous and therefore, much debarred topic, as are issues concerning money, excretion, sex and death. I feel that to enter most conversation is fraught with menace, and I often glide into and out of danger with perfunctory expressions void of substance and empty of meaning. People pass each other daily with a mechanical “How are you?” but remain in constant motion without waiting for reply. In fact, no reply is proffered because none is expected. The response to “How are you?” when it might be forthcoming is often “Good,” but we rarely wait for details, and at a hint that more might be forthcoming we speed away like the White Rabbit: “I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date!” And I have come to wonder, what exactly does good mean, anyway? And if sometimes we hear “Don’t Ask,” in response to our query we farerelieved of responsibility, and we proceed in conversation no further, or competitively we respond in passing, “Ugh, me too!”

Those casual and routine utterances aren’t really conversation. Instead, they serve as replacements for it. I suppose a better offer would be the question “How do you feel about your day, evening or event?” I might ask, “How are you feeling?” and to the response “Good or bad,” continue on I could continue on, “I wonder what you might mean by good or bad?” Or as Arlo Guthrie sang once, I could wonder “Have you thought of anything on down the line?”