How to Have Good Conversations (Around the Thanksgiving Table or Otherwise)

November 26, 2021 | By Raquel Sequeira TD ‘21.5

Pictured: plates and glasses on a table set for a large gathering

As I reach the end of my time at Yale, I’ve been reflecting on the highlights. I’ve realized that many of the best moments of the past five years have just been…talking to people. Brilliant people, it should be said. The kinds of conversations where you start with British Literature and wind your way to quantum computing, or from the philosophy of infinity to the meaning of joy. God is usually in there. You find yourself gesturing to invisible diagrams on the wall behind you. You forget your complaints and anxieties about school in this momentary oasis of dialogue.

The only downside is that five years of rich conversations have spoiled me. Now, I don’t know how to deal with bad conversations. I’m not just talking about awkward encounters with not-quite-friends-but-more-than-acquaintances at The Game, though the attempt to be sincere in those meetings is often draining. I mean when you’re trying to go “deep” with someone and just…can’t. For some reason, the conversation remains at a surface level; no one is able to open up about what they love or fear or hope. Instead of being invigorated by mutual enthusiasm, you leave feeling unsatisfied. What’s the missing piece from a bad conversation that makes it so different from a soul-elevatingly good one?

After a few sub-par conversations recently, I thought I had figured out what was missing. The problem was that my interlocutors didn’t have a framework for “The Good,” what is right and worth pursuing, which meant they couldn’t articulate why they felt positively or negatively about certain things. I’ll give a paraphrased example from a conversation I had with a friend:

Me: “So, what made you want to pursue a PhD in materials science?”

Friend: “Well, it will allow me to work on creating materials that help to combat climate change–more efficient solar panels, cooling systems, batteries, and such.”

Me: “And why is that important to you?”

Friend: “I just feel like I have to do something with my life that helps people.”

Me: “Why do you think that?”

Friend: “I guess it’s kind of an ethical obligation.”

Me: “But what does that mean to you? Where does that obligation come from?”

Friend: “I don’t know...I don’t really think about that.”

And then we were stuck. My friend wasn’t even much bothered by his inability to answer my questions. Without the belief that some higher truth is at stake–the truth of The Good–his conversation lacked a sense of urgency. 

After realizing what was missing, I felt I had a duty to guide my struggling conversation partners in the direction of greater self-awareness. I would prod them: “Why do you think a career that helps people is a good thing?” “Why are you bothered by that person’s opinion?” Sometimes this yielded a richer conversation, but more often it resulted in a sheepish “I don’t know…” and left me feeling gross and condescending. I certainly didn’t feel like I had deepened the relationship.

 I remember once hearing someone described as a “generous conversationalist.” That phrase stuck with me because I felt called out. I might be a powerful or agile conversationalist, but I don’t think I could honestly describe myself as a generous one. I get caught up in my own webs of ideas, swept away by my own flights of language. I am greedy for stimulation by exciting new ideas. Moreover, I selfishly ignore a difficult truth: that we all speak different languages. I mean this almost literally. The words we use, the way we string together sentences, and the metaphors and allusions that we reach for are often very different from those of the person we are talking to. This is obvious when I’m talking to my TikTok-hip teenage sister, but it can be true with fellow Yalies, too. While some of the magic of Yale conversations comes from shared references and vocabulary (often influenced by philosophy) it can be easy to fall into the particular jargon of one’s major, and I often find myself disoriented by the ironic tone common to my fellow Gen Z-ers.

More subtly, it often seems like the way I flow from one idea to the next, while logical and intuitive to me, is not for the other person. This is what was happening in that conversation with my friend, when the obvious next question for me was “Why do you think this is good?” but for him, this question made no sense. (This particular difference often distinguishes conversations with my Christian and non-Christian friends, however, some of my best conversations at Yale have been with spiritually thoughtful non-believers.) This difference creates a barrier to understanding and good conversation, and somehow, we just...miss each other. When I know this to be the case but don’t make any effort to change how I am communicating with someone, it betrays a lack of conversational generosity. 

Yet how do we communicate generously when we’re speaking different languages? The problem with my prodding tactic was that I was forcing my own “language” or flow of ideas on the other person, rather than setting aside my own goals for the conversation to create space for the other person’s idea flow, which might help me get to know them better. On the other hand, it can feel insincere to give in completely to another person’s patterns of speech and thought. This is the conundrum of conversational generosity, which demands both flexibility and sincerity. 

 A similar conundrum crops up in many corners of philosophy. Broadly, the question is, how do we take billions of subjective units of experience (people, minds) and unite them into some kind of shared objectivity, or “intersubjectivity”? How do I know that your red is my red, for example, or why do we all think that 2 + 2 = 4? One response is monism, which says that we’re all actually just one mind. But that response isn’t true to the lived experience of our individuality, something both painful and good, and something I definitely experience when I get that “ships in the night” feeling during a conversation. Another response is phenomenology, which says that we are all constructing our own experience of reality. But this response pushes us too far apart, giving no reason to hope that our individual constructions will overlap, and I’ve had too many good conversations at Yale to give up on this hope. Monism provides too little distinction, phenomenology too little unity. 

 This is the point in the article when I should offer my theologically-grounded solution to both the metaphysical and conversational conundrums and my answer to the question in the title. Confession time: I don’t have one yet. All I have so far is a potential first step, which is an attitude shift. First of all, unsurprisingly, I could use some more humility. If the missing ingredient in a bad conversation is urgency for Truth, someone else’s language might provide a path to Truth that I never would have explored! In addition, I want to explore the ways that I can pursue Truth through love, not just through ideas. This is where conversational generosity comes in–perhaps starting by simply asking “What’s been on your mind lately?” Another’s vulnerability is a huge gift of Truth in itself, to be received with gratitude. 

 Thanksgiving with my cast of family characters will be a great chance to practice what I preach (starting with not preaching). Along with my sister’s TikTok slang, the kitchen cacophony will be filled with my little brother’s baseball jargon, another brother’s blend of Buddhist and astrological spiritual dialects, peppered with Spanish and Guaraní from my Paraguayan cousins. Not just the way we speak, but the way we think has the potential to clash at almost every word. Yet if I choose to engage rather than retreat, I know I will deepen my relationships...and definitely learn some words I would never have encountered on my own. At the same time, I will be feeling immensely grateful for those people in my life who speak the same language I do.