The Art of Meaningful Conversations

Great conversations are opportunities to learn and feel

The Wedding at Cana, by Paolo Veronese, 1562 (public domain - Wikipedia)

“Everybody’s talkin’ at me
I don’t hear a word they’re sayin’
Only the echoes of my mind”
— Fred Neil, 1966¹

When’s the last time you had a really good conversation? A great conversation?

I’m talking about an exchange where you and the other person are doing more than swapping dialogue: a more intimate, profound discourse.

There’s a concept known as the Great Conversation, in which thinkers and writers are constantly building on the ideas of those who have gone before them, and it was described by Robert Maynard Hutchins in the first volume of the Great Books of the Western World series:

“The great books were written by the greatest liberal artists. They exhibit the range of the liberal arts. The authors were also the greatest teachers. They taught one another. They taught all previous generations, up to a few years ago. The question is whether they can teach us. To this question we now turn.”

Read that quote again.

At …