Thoughts on Conversation

Have you ever had a conversation or confrontation with somebody and walked away feeling like you didn't really talk? Like you or the other person wasn't really listening to what you had to say, but spending their time thinking about how to refute your position? Well, it's probably true: when you think about it, you make hundreds of judgments during the time span of your average work day, whether they're about yourself, a co-worker, your spouse, or children. There are literally thousands of unfounded conclusions rampaging through your brain at any given point of time? Kind of mind breaking isn't it? Don't worry, it gets worse. How many of those judgments concern yourself? Everybody has bland spots, prejudices, biased opinions, and preconceived notions, and most people go through their lives without overcoming these blind spots. In fact most of the time we enter into conversations with people, we could actually be casting our personality, or our ideal of a good person over the actuality of the person we're talking too. Sure, no harm done if it's just a passing conversation, but what if it's your spouse?
A few months into our marriage I realized that my wife was a completely different person than I am, which is good. But that make communication tricky. Because other people are just like I am, which means that there are whole worlds of thought that I am not privy to. There is no window in their forehead that shows me what they're thinking, or what they're about to say. So every time I hear myself say something like "I just can't believe somebody would do that." I have to realize that I'm not really allowing that person to be a person at all, but expecting them to be what fits my ideal of a good, caring human being. That being said, that means that a lot of my conversations with people aren't really conversations, just a one way street that I'm trying to get people on to. Conversation implies that somehow there is an exchange of ideas happening, which means that I should be receiving ideas and information, rather than imparting. Imparting information is called teaching, or lecturing....not conversation. I think we miss out as people by filtering other through our biases and preconceived notions. Our world is a very colorful and beautiful place, and there is no way to see that if we don't put down our self-colored lens and see things and people the way that they have been created to be. It's okay to disagree (dare I say it's even good and healthy?), the only people that say that there can't be unity with disagreement, that everybody has to be "like-minded", are people who are either insecure in their leadership, or have a faulty understanding of unity. Unity is a mutual submission based on love, put in simple terms, my willingness to drop my agenda and perspective to see, really see, what another person has to say. Anything short of that will result in me living in a world full of my own reflection. How sad is that?