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Personality Adjustment for Conversation - part 1

Fundamentally, talking seems to be the urge to share our troubles with others, and the price we have to pay for this privilege is sharing their troubles. There seems to be no more certain law than that every pleasure has its price, and that every urge, if it is to be satisfied enjoyably at all, must be controlled. If government does not regulate air channels, and if broadcasters do not observe them, the air will be jammed — and nobody will enjoy any program. If in driving along the highways you do not control your urge according to the corresponding urges of the others, blueprinted in traffic laws, you will soon not be driving at all. So, basically, in talking, we want to talk to give expression to our hopes and desires, our problems and fears, sometimes directly, usually carefully camouflaged. But everyone we talk to wants to talk for the very same reasons. And as soon as the channels are not well regulated and controlled, one person will discharge himself, the other will be bored. You might say that then the talker wins. But it is a frustrating victory. For tomorrow when with increased desire he wants to do it again, his friend will be talking to someone else.

Any one-sided conversation is literally a frustration. The listener feels deprived of the chance to unburden himself; the talker will be deprived of the chance tomorrow; conse­quently both are unsatisfied. Everyone will, I think, recall this sense of frustration after some conversation. If you had it, it means that in the course of it you have not had a chance to talk about the things which were really on your mind, and have had to listen one-sidedly to what was on the other's mind, but not on yours. This sense of frustration defeats the purpose of talking, which must be to make all participants feel lighter in spirit, refreshed, relieved, renewed.

The conversational dilemma remains: everyone wants to talk about what is on his mind, yet to be a good conversa­tionalist he must let his hearer, or must seem to let him, relieve himself of what is on his. If you were a saint, I should find it easy to tell you what to do. Simply keep fighting back your own urge to find someone to listen to what's on your mind and try to make yourself a willing receptacle of what is on that of others. I tell you quite sincerely that this would make you immensely popular. I also believe that God in His kindness would quickly give you the grace of such a deep sympathy with others' problems that what is on your friend's mind would quite really come to be on your mind too for the moment, so much so that, far from being frus­trated by his unburdening, you would be fulfilled and subli­mated. You would walk away from the conversation with the lightness of heart and the exhilaration that you feel when you have parted with a still-good suit at the St. Vincent de Paul's poor center.

Related terms include how to speak hungarian and ways to improve public speaking.