Silent Evolution of Conversation

Just returned from an extended family catch-up. Lovely, of course. But equally, one of those where you let out a big exhale once you’re out of the door. An event where vague relatives all remember you—some version from a decade ago—but you’re there waiting for someone else to mention their name so that it can jog your memory. Plenty of food. Endless superficial conversation.

These ambiguous discussions are a sneaky exercise in patience and concentration when you’re surrounded by five or more other such conversation in the same, cramped room—not that that’s news to anyone. What I really learned this time however, is that the difficulty ramps up significantly when half of those around you are near-deaf!

Speaking with my uncles put something into perspective for me: the default conversation topics at such a gathering follow a fairly linear evolution. As you might expect, for Mary and I, we get asked without fail to name the favourite place we’ve travelled to, and perhaps where the best food was, or what on earth we plan to do with our lives once we return to society! I don’t have great answers to such questions, although we’ve been slinging the same lines constantly for the past few months.

Back home, an introduction commonly seems to be what do you study? Or, if you know someone a bit already, perhaps a how’s uni/work? It always feels a little derivative. I rarely find that conversations with this hook lead to much. For Mary especially. It must be such a pain to constantly be asked about university when you work full-time rather than studying.

Nevertheless, I thought my uncle painted an interesting picture when he mentioned how the conversation age-curve often seems to follow a trajectory of: your school; your university; your job; your kids; your kids’ schools and universities and jobs; sometimes relevant hobbies; and, eventually, what hearing-aid brand have worked the best for you. Sincerely. Hearing aids were a hot topic today. Not that there’s anything in the slightest wrong with that. It simply typifies a paradigm shift in relevance and concern as you age.

Our parents’ generation reminisced about what narrative structures their conversations might take in a decade. Most of all, they just hope to be able to hold one coherently, and without needing it to be a shouting competition. On the flip-side, from a perspective of youth, patience goes a long way.

Current conversation norms seem firmly engrained and battle-tested, but time sneaks up on you quickly.