Monologue or Dialogue

It is surprising how talking is so easy and conversing is not! Talking just needs one person’s effort—it doesn’t matter if the other person is pretending to hear or whether you are explaining with an intent to be understood, it's one-directional. You just have some unspoken words in your mind, you let them out of your mouth—unexplained, unheard, doesn’t matter—you feel relieved after you have talked. It’s like fart: you let it out, and it feels nice. In fact, you sometimes don’t even need a person to talk to—a figure, a statue, a public forum, or a journal works.

But conversing is different. It involves active effort from two / more parties. It needs intent, intellect, humility, and wisdom (IIHW)
• An intent of well being first and foremost, followed by the will/ability to talk and explain without filters—unhindered and unbiased, choice of words immaterial. An intent to hear / rehear through questions, argument, acknowledgement, acceptance, denial etc. Response is the key. It needs a dialogue for thoughts to converge.
• It needs the intellect to go deep into the topic.
• It needs the humility to accept that you don’t know when you don't know.
• And it needs the wisdom to understand when a conversation needs to just stop and turn to action instead of staying as just words.

In this day and age, most conversations have become superficial. Most dialogues are just intended to feed the ego of “I know it, and you should listen” Guilty as charged at times.

At workplaces, most lunch break conversations revolve around filling the silence. The common thread of discussion is traffic, trips, and movies. No one is really listening; one is just trying to prove one's point, wanting to get noticed by peers and juniors for the cool thing they did or earning some brownie points from seniors by throwing praises in the air. The desire to actually communication is so minuscule.

In families, one enters a dialogue with the preset mindset that they won’t be understood—because they never have been. The attempt to initiate a dialogue starts to dwindle. The same anecdotes are repeated over and over again to bask in fond memories once lived. There’s a pride in advising purely based on seniority or a disregard for elderly opinions due to rebellion against the system or the illusion of knowing it all due to greater content exposure.

At the beginning of a partnership, there’s the spark of newness and the awe of infatuation, leading to great conversations. There’s a newfound, intense joy in being understood and heard. The similarities are greatly discussed, feeding the fire of great conversations. The dissimilarities are set aside—the uncomfortable topics are seldom discussed, parked for later, or deemed unnecessary or sad.

And then, days pass. The dissimilarities start surfacing. The interjections begin. Instead of considering the differences as strengths and part of the natural equation, the ego to mould the other person to one’s liking kicks in. And when no middle ground is found, one starts questioning the choice of partner instead of looking at the already established and proven intent. Instead of seeing it as an opportunity to build intellect, stubbornness takes over in rationalising one’s theories. Instead of using humility to accept one’s issues, the conversation spirals into blame games, recalling every past right and wrong—leading to arguments and ultimately disassociation.

So, talks are the foundation, but conversations the pillar. And it’s equally important to disengage and re-battle—without permanent disengagement. Love and hate are two sides of the same coin, as long as one remembers that love is something to be grateful for, even when hate is at its peak, and dialogue is the train to go back and forth those extremes, only to strengthen the bridge.