Conversations

Looking back at the years spent in UCSD, one thing dawns clearer than any other. I have enjoyed the company and friendship of only those who explicitly offered neither brilliant insights into the grave facets of life nor any secret fountains of wisdom. I have come to despise small and big talk alike and I have ended up deriving all my understanding and enjoyment from what I would term trivial talk. And in some sense that is the most important conversation one can have. It pays heed, in one fell swoop, both to the absurdity of existence which is missed in serious discussions and to the simple joys of life which suffer such a debilitating end at the hands of small talk. Discussions which started with ridiculous topics and disintegrated into wild orgies of inanities, strewn with unspeakable political incorrectness and a lack of consideration for all that society holds dear. And yet those discussions were much more than just juvenile pleasures. They were sharp and intelligent and in their own twisted way reduced life and society of their phony garbs - something that no amount of serious deliberation can do because it is too mindful of hurting sentiments.

The upshot of several years of such discussions is that now I have little tolerance for insipid, utilitarian talk. Religious debates, political allegiances, nationalistic ideas, group mentality, financial advice and many more such 'important' topics have started seeming insufferable to me unless they are being discussed within a satirical framework. And I do not understand how can they not be! Does the illogicality of petty little human obsessions repeated ad-infinitum on this little speck of nothingness we call Earth not even deserve its own chuckle? I think it does and I also think that for precisely this reason satire is the most honest and most fruitful attitude to have while discussing anything.

The only conversations which I can never seem to discuss with sarcasm are those which concern passion because existence of passion ties very well with my own individualistic take on life. Although passionate people run the risk of monopolizing conversation, they are at least honest and original even when they are not engaging, but often the existence of pure passion in a person is enough for me to have an automatic respect for him/her. It is too bad for me then that such people are few and far between.