A little bit about conversation!

Last night’s event with Girl Talk on The Art of Conversation was a blast! It was incredibly fun to both share my presentation, but also hear the thoughts of those on the call. It was good to be with people I care about and share something with them.

When the video is ready, I will share it here. In the meantime: two points rose as being of high interest, and I suspect these are of interest to many people: listening, and exiting conversations one does not want to be a part of. They came up enough to make me think that listening needs its own workshop (noodling on it) and that I want to give more thought to the gracefully exiting an unwanted conversation matter.

Because what I designed was based on the act of two people who want to know each other conversing. Even if it is the first time you met. So you start small with basic questions and move on to bigger things, and la di da. Unwanted chat - being cornered at a party, listening to someone complain or brag, being asked “What do you do?” because this is DC after all - these are not conversations. But, yes, it is totally an okay thing to get out of a conversation you have no interest in.

Ultimately, what I stressed was respect and the need to recognize each conversation as an opportunity to truly meet another human being and enter into relationship with them. One guest, a young (probably Dominican) priest in Brooklyn - someone who talks to friends and strangers alike all the time as part of this job - made the point that the people we meet cannot be by accident, or random. That there is arguably a divine design to all our encounters, and in remembering that we recall that the person in front of us is sacred. He was exactly right.

If you’re hankerin’ to get in on some more Laura-teaching-classes action, my (virtual) email etiquette class is still coming up at General Assembly on May 19. Register here!