Sensible, Meaningful Conversation

It really makes you feel good when you would chance upon a conversation with people who are not only close to you but talk with utmost sensibilty.

But what is sensibility? Is it not a thing too subjective, perceived only in the mind of the perceiver? What I find sensible may not be sensible to other people. What they find sensible may not appear as such to me. To define talking sensibly by saying having a kind of conversation that is neither nonsensical nor unpretentious, would defy a basic law in definition. Do not define something by stating what it is not.

I really find it intruiging what makes a conversation sensible? Last friday, I met up with my good pals Lillen and Shiela at Figaro SM North. They were my high school buddies whom I haven't seen for the longest time. Then last saturday, I made it a point to meet Joyce at Starbuck Intramuros, my coffee buddy during college. So there, at two different occasions, I engaged into a kind of conversation I have long missed. And it was good to find out that they felt the same way.

On those two consecutive nights I have gone through different worlds. I have penetrated their personal lives, in the same way that they peeked on mine. We technically shared all our dreams, hopes and anxieties, accepting each statement without the liability of questions or criticisms. We have reached the shores of politics and philosophy in our quest to understand our circumstances, our worlds, which have basically evolved even though we were apart. We have glided along the cliff of our past, dug into the people who have influenced the way we think and mulled over those who have tried to destroy us. Those two nights were separate journeys that transcended the power and ability of the mind because it is the heart which spoke, and it did so with so much conviction and empathy.

This to me is an example of a sensible conversation. To say, however, that what other people may be talking about virtually anywhere: in corridors, in public transportations, in cafes most especially, on topics of their own filthy personal lives, of other people's lives (gossiping), or of what's new, hip and in, are void of substance, would make me guilty of arrogance.

What really bothered me to rant on sensible conversation is the present state of conversations nowadays in places like starbucks, figaro, seattle's or what have you. These coffee houses have evolved into symbol of status, power, and social class. Staying in one would reveal a sense of prestige and hierarchy because he/she could avail to sit down and satiate caffeinic urges at such an exorbitance. What happened with this evolution is that these coffee houses are at a brink of losing its own prestige as supposedly a venue for intellectual discourse on humanities, philosophy and virtually any topics under the sun that stimulates the intellect. I could only be hopeful that such European culture be brought here. But it seems it would only be a mere hope because now, they are being degraded into a place of sham, pretense and superficiality.

I do not claim to be one who always speaks with substance. But those two separate occasions of meeting my close buddies made me realize such state of present cafes alongside defining what sensible conversation is.

At the end of the day I was puzzled by two quite similar remarks. Lillen would tell me, "You guys really made me feel how it is to be me," and Joyce would say "I could just be myself when I am with you." That to me is a sensible, meaningful conversation.