The Conversation

What an awesome Friday! It happened again last week. I ended up sleeping the whole day and the whole night thus failing to write something for the reader. You are probably used to the inconsistencies by now.

This morning I woke up worried about the possibility of the extinction of one of the things I love the most; a decent conversation; so I thought we might as well start a conversation about it.

It is a well-known fact that human interaction is essential for survival, pleasure and development at personal, community and global level. This is why there is so much effort put into such things as communication technologies with the same improving by the day. While we would expect these things to improve human interaction and connection to improve with these advances, however, there has been a constant decline in the same with human interaction getting more superficial, meaningless and unnecessarily complicated. Well. At least according to me.

You might have noticed that nowadays conversations about important issues have gotten extremely complicated because people usually take offences in situations where offences shouldn’t be taken. To some, being described as a short person is enough of a reason for throwing a tantrum which makes the use of adjectives for describing people an issue for some of us with limited vocabulary. We are not even allowed to talk about some things for the fear of sounding racist, sexist, extremist or derogatory and if things continue to be this way we might end up  being mute from not speaking; out of the fear of saying the wrong that. Now that is just wrong because it demeans the whole essence of plurality. I mean; what is the point of having 7 billion people freely roaming around if you can’t interact with a few hundred freely? Perhaps the only thing that we people forget is that offences are not given, but are rather taken just as one Trevor Noah likes to emphasize.

In the wake of the social media age, I found myself being excited about Facebook in my early college days. The moment I joined, I quickly got to make a lot of friends and within weeks I had over a half of a thousand Facebook friends. Then came the groups. I used to spend a good fraction of my time of the day reading what people had to say on different political, religious and dating forums on Facebook and the peak of it all came in the build up to the 2014 elections. Groups that were supposedly created with the aim of advancing national interests were awash with political campaign posts polite and derogatory alike. Fast forward to 2018 I am a graduate who happens to have expanded his circle and is lingering in Whatsapp groups along with far more educated and senior people in society. The year prior to elections is offering the same hype as that of 2014 (and more) and the presence of more convenient apps for sharing news and propaganda was ideally supposed to make such discussions exciting. Guess what? It is not. People are getting intolerant by the day and they get to vex at the most benign of contrary opinions. Outside of political discussions, things are not so different, With people getting so soft and easily triggered, conversation, a thing that was supposed to flourish is now facing the danger of extinction.

If you could not relate with that because you have not interacted with people who go poaching for someone who can offend them, here is another angle to it. In relationships and marriage, people are supposed to have good and honest conversations as they embark on the journey of constantly building up their relationships. Rather interestingly, the art (or science) of having a conversation in a relationship or in marriage is becoming a rare thing on its own. I know that there are people who are reading this and thinking of playing the “look at who is talking card” but my fair share of dating life (which lasted well over two years; and I have it on my CV) is that good communication leads to a good relationship. In relations to the article we wrote on post-mortem Friday about relationships failing because of sex and lack of preparation, here is the other thing that is fuelling the fracas. Perhaps people are subscribing to the Chris Rock’s Tambourine (if you haven’t watched this, you should) philosophy that relationships should hinge on having lots of sex and going places, in which case good conversations and deep emotional connection are playing very little. We have relationships in which the only thing partners talk about is how the other is doing, what they have eaten, how much the other needs and their weekends will go; with no interest whatsoever in the inner well-being of the partner. I find that too superficial for my liking and not worth my time. Attention seeker? Baby? Maybe. But as people build up towards relationships and marriage, it is necessary that the conversations go beyond high definition pictures and pizza.

Then there is this thing of communication in the family; parents and children and between siblings. It is funny how limitations of tradition hinder conversations between parents and children and in between siblings. On one crazy night (probably too stressed up and under influence) I remember calling my mum and asking her why she hadn’t called me in over a month and where she thought I was. What the whole situation taught me is that there is need for constant communication between parents and their children, however grown. The fact that I noticed a gap in this thing made me realize that there is a possibility that there are a whole bunch of sons and daughters who are not having good chats with parents. I do not have a whole lot of parents on my readers list but when you guys get there or if you are there, you better be the parents our generation never had; those who can be a safe haven for their own children and those who can have a decent chat with them.

We could add the dimension of conversations between religious leaders and their judgmental tendencies towards followers and how we need to get rid of that (moni azibusa nonse) but that would push the article beyond the recommended word limit. All in all, we need to have good conversations in every setting. Ever realized that prayer is some form of conversation too, anthu opemphera inu? Even God wants a good chat with His own. Having said that, I will say this again. We all need good conversations in which we can call a spade by its name without triggers. In relationships, conversations need to aim at building deep connection between spouses by going beyond the basics.

By the way… Who of you people stays in Zomba? Let us meet at the Botanic Gardens for the reception of the wedding of one of Richie Online’s religious followers, Sir Peter Yakobe.

Have a lovely weekend.