The Conversation Comeback

a love letter to all my friends

To an extent, I know what each day will hold.

I know my rhythm each morning and afternoon. The drive to work and the phone call with my mom. The drive home and the windows down. Cooking and cleaning, reading and walking, writing and drawing. All of it follows the same pattern.

While the mundanity of life solidifies to routine, the one thing I will never be sure of is who I’ll talk to and what I’ll learn. 

Right now, I am in a weird stage of life where most of my people are older than me. They are newly married, or celebrating 30th wedding anniversaries. Some of them have a 5 month old and others have seniors graduating this May. They have careers and homes and families.

Their lives are so rich.

They have lived through the moments I thought would last forever. They have walked through deep disappointment and been pleasantly surprised again. They have fallen in love and stayed in love. They have been lonely and found sweet friendships. They have lost and seen the beauty to come from it.

They are a living testimony that life keeps moving and things do really get better.

Time and time again, through conversation, I am brought out of my 22-year-old-drowning-in-postgrad-self and into the married-with-kids-and-a-loving-husband life.

Sometimes it can be lonely, feeling behind in so many ways.

But usually, I am hit with the realization that adults aren’t actually boring. That idea of one day becoming one isn’t so scary.

Without the older people in my life, reminding me of what’s to come, I would never see the light that has yet to be. The love I have yet to love, the hardships I have yet to learn from.

My conversations center around wrestling with the real questions of life and faith and existence. I have grown deeper, seeing the realities of the broken world we live in, and still how God never fails to provide abundantly.

Many times, it can be intimidating, to hear what people have gone through. My mind quickly wonders what could be in front of me. What losses, heartbreaks and disappointments could wait around the corner? It’s easy to get lost in the mess of it all. But everyone has lived to tell the tale of whatever pain and grief they’ve faced.

Redemption is no stranger to their stories. And it won’t be to mine either.

I am walking away from this week knowing much more than I did all because of a few conversations.

From the dangers of seed oils in food and its impact on this upcoming election to what it means to fast and why we do it. I have learned about emotional manipulation in churches and the reflex in babies that protects them from choking. I learned about dating in the landline era and what it feels like to see your grandbaby for the first time. I know what it looks like to do what you love and that you never outgrow hobbies. I learned to paint with oil pastels and how to make chicken soup.

It didn’t take reading a Pulitzer Prize Winner or paying hundreds to attend a lecture. I just went about my daily life and interacted with people who had something to say.

And everyone has something to say.

Stories and lessons and knowledge and wisdom are all around us. They hide in button-downs and loafers, in dresses and painted nails. It is only through the comeback of conversation that wisdom can be mined from the hearts of those around us.

As fall calls us into rooms that smell of dust and burning, heaters kicking on after months of hibernation, would connection through conversation be the story we all tell. That willingness to learn would fill the spaces between, making houses homes and strangers friends.