Last week, my newsletter subscribers got a swath of exclusive content. (To join the adventuring party, aka the newsletter, click here!)

In that email, I linked my blog “Be Trendy or DIE!” which my lovely mother reread, then sent me a message about.

“Lucy!” she said. “Your blog made me think of this podcast episode. I think you would love it.”

Mother knows best, as they say. She was right, and I can’t stop thinking about it.

I’ve talked before about how important conversation is.

But I’d forgotten what good conversation sounds like.

Under Milk Wood

Conversation is a dying art, it seems. As I said earlier, I’ve talked about this before. People are quick to accuse, to jump to judgment, to skip to name-calling. We fail, so quickly nowadays, to relate to our fellow humans on an intricate level. On a human level. Sometimes on any level at all.

In that blog, I was thinking about big issues. World issues. The scary important things of life, which seem to be the only things anyone ever cares about on the internet.

But those aren’t the only things people talk about.

There are ordinary things. Ordinary lives.

So when I learned about Under Milk Wood, I got excited.

Under Milk Wood is a radio play from the 20th century, set in a small, ordinary Welsh town full of many ordinary people. The listener gets insight into these people’s thoughts and lives and dreams.

It’s written by a poet named Dylan Thomas, and because it’s poetry, the snippets I heard of it were utterly beautiful.

My favorite description is of the “sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fish-boat-bobbing sea.”

So first up, we have ordinary places described in odd, beautiful ways. That’s already a win for Lucy.

But from my understanding (as I’ve yet to hear the whole play yet), the play draws the listener into the realization that he or she is very much like everybody else. Everyone is ordinary and everyone is interesting, and everyone has their quirks that are not too different from yours.

We all have secret little thoughts that we don’t tell anybody but God. We all have small, terrible ideas that we would never act on or say allowed, but still the ideas remain. And if we ever heard anybody else have those same thoughts, we’d be shocked–disturbed even! But again, still, we think things too.

So how different are we, really?

How often do we forget that everyone has a mind full of thoughts and imaginations and dreams?

I tend to forget, I think.

I’m too caught up in my own world, sometimes, to think about somebody else’s.

And I think that’s why the next part had such an impact on me…

Talking heads

Beyond the actual content of the podcast episode, what delighted me most was the conversation itself.

I realized it had been a very long time since I’d heard two strangers on the internet talk. Not argue, not accuse, not debate.

Talk. Converse.

So many of my own thoughts and feelings, the “elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that I had heard somewhere a long time ago” that I thought would be “uncommunicable forever” (as Nick Caraway/F. Scott Fitzgerald would say), were given shape and voice by these two strangers and a 20th-century poet that I’d never heard of before.

And they could’ve been talking about anything, I think. Shoes. Coffee. How to restart the wifi router. It was the fact that they were both so thoughtful about what they were saying, and the each let the other actually say anything at all.

Ten unbroken minutes would go by before the host jumped into the conversation. He would just sit and let his guest talk. And whenever either of them–host or guest–had something to say, it was because he had something to say.

And that sounds silly, I know! But think about it. How many times do you butt-in to a conversation even when you don’t really have an opinion? I can’t even COUNT the number of times I’ve ridden into a conversation on pure emotion–thinking I was on a white horse but it was really just a high one.

I tend to get caught up in the talking, not so much the conversing. I fill silence rather than contributing to it. Usually not on purpose, I just want to be involved.

But these two guys reminded me what true connection really is. What a good conversation sounds like and flows like. How it brings value to the room–builds the other person up, not yourself. Every time one of the guys said, “Hey, I’ve never thought about that aspect of this play before!” or “I didn’t know about this play until you told me,” it made a smile grow on my face. It made me so so happy. It made me say, “Hey, I want to talk with people like this.”

We’re not just a pair of talking heads. At least, we shouldn’t be.

We’re two souls connecting over a topic. Always two souls. Two people. Two.

My obvious, ordinary truth this week is that conversation isn’t about just me. It’s a joint operation. You can’t ride a tandem bike alone. That’s just weird.

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The podcast I’m talking about is called “Old School with Shilo Brooks.” The episode I’m referencing is called “The Secret Lives of Ordinary People,” and I highly recommend you check it out! If it wasn’t already clear, I found it to be an absolutely beautiful and delightful conversation. Click the orange text to give it a listen!

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