At a certain age, does
everyone feel like they have had every conversation they are ever going to
have—that every conversation (other than those with intimates) is pre-packaged,
as if chosen from a sampler menu on an airplane playlist? Is it an inevitable part of living
longer, that conversations begin to feel like some kind of strange dance in
which we follow pre-determined scripts with no real meaning? Or, possibly, is conversation itself
changing?
From what I can remember, in
just the last couple days I have successfully (or so I imagine) dialed in the
following pre-digested conversations:
- having a dog in the city
- city versus suburb
life/car vs. walking/peace vs. energy
- country house vs. new
weekend adventures
- change in air travel
experience
- pre-school admission
process
- real estate (everywhere)
in relation to New York
- date night for mom and
dad/need for
- the glassification of
the urban landscape
- career nanny vs. young
vibrant babysitter choice
- youth texting/screen
time addiction
- children’s birthday
parties/costs/frequency
- overscheduled
children/old days when we had to create a game from a stick/organized classes
vs. street play
- Costco shopping/bulk
toilet paper
And these are just the
handful I can remember.
The 100-calorie
conversation—all subjects available for purchase in snack-size pouches.
Within these pre-packaged
interactions can be found an infinite array of standardized danglers, the
little niceties we toss at one another that mean less than nothing. Perhaps we do
all this because we believe that this is what we are supposed to do as members
of society? “Safe travel,”
“Everything good?” “Where
did the summer go?” “Take good care of you,” “Better to end vacation when it’s raining than sunny!”
“Enjoy it now, it goes so fast.” “Three kids, two hands.” And on it goes…
While I don’t recall agreeing
to play a part in this grand performance, nonetheless, every day I watch as I
too cheerfully embark into the land of canned dialogue, as if I were reading
words off an internal teleprompter.
Like puppets, we lip synch our pre-scripted parts with the proper
enthusiasm and feigned newness, dutifully behaving as good members of
society. Despite the ease with
which it all unfolds, in the midst of it, I often hear myself silently asking,
“Really… are we going to do this… this dance that we are trained to do, this
exchange of language that means nothing, and that we have done a thousand times
before?” So too, I wonder who
wrote this script that we all recite from cellular memory for reasons that we
don’t even know? Nonetheless, as
the thoughts stream through, I continue dancing the touch-less dance. With furrowed brow, the seal still balances
the bowling pin on her nose.
Recently, while pondering
these questions, my attention was drawn to my cat and dog, who were playing on
the floor below me. The two are
best friends, as if brother and sister… the boy being so active and the girl so
relational right from the start (oops…I accidentally pressed the son vs.
daughter switch on my conversation playlist). In any case, the two animals spend a lot of time (and seem
to deeply enjoy) just bumping and nudging each other. But the scene got me thinking. Maybe conversation is not
really about the content of the words but rather a way of simply establishing
contact that is friendly and acknowledging. It might be that all these pre-scripted conversations and
time-consuming niceties are akin to my Shiba Inu smushing her nose into her big
orange companion; a way to acknowledge those with whom we share the same
floor/planet at the same time in history.
I am an optimist and thus I
enjoy a warm-hearted interpretation of our pre-scripted conversations as some
form of human bumping and smushing.
And yet, deep down, I worry that this societal play that we are
performing has more pessimistic implications. I can’t help but wonder if the
rise of technology, as the primary form of communication in our culture, is not
related to our conversations sounding more and more like computer-generated recordings.
I am fairly certain that we
used to use conversation as a way to connect, get closer, bridge the separation
we feel. Conversation is now
becoming a means to just the opposite end—something that we use to disconnect
and avoid contact; a dance in which nobody touches. The pre-packaged interaction that we are dialing in with
increasing ease and regularity acts as a foam pad through which we humans are
less and less able to pass.
Is it possible that
conversation itself is being kidnapped by the technological milieu of our
time? Is conversation becoming a
franchised product, like a mahogany side table at Restoration Hardware—and
thereby disappearing into a corporate-sponsored vacuum? As conversation morphs into
pre-digested, bite-sized portions, I wonder how, where and if we will go about
forming bridges with those we don’t know.
Perhaps new means will be found—computer programs that bypass the need
for conversation or sharing experience.
Or perhaps, like our tail, the need for conversation and connection will
simply be bred out of the species—no longer necessary for optimum
productivity. For now, I suppose
we are left to watch and wait, and most importantly, refrain from turning this
dialogue into another pre-packaged and disposable version of itself. Stay tuned…
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