CONVERSATION

Part 1:

Coming across Samuel Johnson’s "Essay on Conversation" has stimulated this comment, this brief essay, this internet post on the same subject after the experience of more than 70 years of living: 1943 to 2014. I was the only child of older parents. Our home was the scene of much music, much solitude, and much conversation. My mother was 40 when I was conceived in 1943 and my father was 55. They both sang in choirs, and brought various groups of people into our small home: first their family and friends, then people affiliated to a political group for meetings of that party, and finally Baha'is from many walks in life.

“The faculty of giving pleasure in conversation is of continual use” says Johnson. "Those who are able to give pleasure in this way are frequently envied and when they leave they are missed," he goes on in closing the first paragraph of his useful and pithy analysis. In my early years of childhood and during my adolescence, I had a gregarious self. This was partly due to being an only child and, what I now see in retrospect, as my associated social need as an only child.

In my initial efforts to teach the Baha'i Faith, say, 1955 to 1965; in my years of employment, and of moving from place to place, also from 1955 to 1965, I was not able, on entering a room, to bring a sense of felicity; when I left my departure was not lamented. My presence did not inspire gaiety nor enliven people’s fancy except on the sports fields and in child and adolescent activities with friends involving 'fun-and-games', the endless self-indulgence which is the life of millions of the young in the last half of the 20th century and early 21st. At least that is how I recall things, how I recall my social-self, in the years before I left southern Ontario in 1967, and then Canada in 1971 to come to Australia.

This inability was not due to lack of knowledge or a proportional lack of virtue; for in the first years of my service to the Cause as a pioneer I completed my high school, my university and my vocational training. I prayed frequently, read the Writings and, indeed, as I often point out, when the opportunity arises, to my son, my friends and associates, I felt more virtuous back then than I do now after these many years of life’s practice. Life has tarnished that early conception of myself as a somewhat virtuous character, a conception I would never have admitted to back in those halcyon years of childhood, adolescence and early adulthood, say, the years up to my late 20s.

Insensibly, after a decade as first a home-front and then an overseas pioneer, 18 to 28, I found myself able to entertain, to give that pleasure which Johnson speaks of and which is, indeed, essential if one is going to be an effective teacher, either in classrooms or in a wide variety of other places promoting one's ideas and passions, or the teachings of Baha’u’llah as I had been trying to do for more than a dozen years by the age of 30. A forgiving eye, a sin-covering eye, as ‘Abdu’l-Baha calls it, is essential; for no one wants to be under the watchful eye of someone who feels some uncontestable sense of superiority. And I did feel that sense in those early years in the field. I felt a sense of moral superiority: clear, graphic, open, subtle, insinuating. By the age of 30 I was slowly beginning to realize I was no saint and could make no claim to superiority in any sense.

Part 2:

I did not possess a “wit whose vivacity”, as Johnson puts it, condemned “slower tongues to silence.” Gradually, I was able to hold my tongue and let others say their piece. My knowledge was not dominant, domineering; my critical eye was not pervasive; my reasoning did not condemn those whose minds were more idle. For to do so, as I was only too well aware, would be to lose any possible praise from my fellows; I would have been avoided and even feared. It took me many years to acquire the essential skills of social interaction. My words would not and did not attract the hearts which was the essential prerequisite of the teaching process, in or out of classrooms. Slowly, I came to realize that I needed to have a set of social aims and skills that others found pleasing, attractive.

And please I did. From February 1972, after ten years in the field, to April 1999, when I retired from full-time paid-employment, there was a reciprocality in the conversational process, mutual entertainment, but nothing too quick, too sprightly, too imaginative, nothing to distort the face without a deeper gladness of the heart underneath, as Johnson emphasizes in his criticism of the overly bright and enthusiastic.

Of course, there are usually many views of just how one is doing in life. My wife offers a more moderate, a more moderating tone and perspective on just how successful I am and have been, than my own more enthusiastic view. Many of my students found me a gentleman who approached saintliness, a person of extreme knowledgeability and one who possessed a delightful sense of humour. Other students would have

gladly confined me to oblivion as a useless weed. One cannot win the day in every way with everyone. We are all many things to many people.

At the very least the pioneer must learn the art of loving, of pleasing, of bringing pleasure, if he or she is to reach the hearts of others. This was my own aim, my own particular approach which grew on my throughout my life beginning, as I say, in my late 20s. This is a long and extensive subject but, to start, such a person at least must have gladness in his heart and it is this gladness that is infectious, that attracts by example. But, again, this must not be carried too far, with too much intensity, too much brightness. A certain moderation of tone and demeanor is helpful.

Part 3:

Indeed, as Johnson goes on, a good-natured personality is important to bring to the conversational milieux. To take on board criticism, to be unmoved by whatever confusion and folly surrounds him and to be willing to listen; these are all essential and useful traits. All of this brings, promotes, induces, a certain cheerfulness, and sometimes friendship.

Of course, conversation is not all. Some of the ablest conversationalists I have known over the years, for the most part in the tenth and final stage of history from a Baha'i perspective,1 were people who suffered a great deal and found human interaction very frustrating. This subject is highly complex and this essay is but a brief foray into its depths and heights, its complexities and enigmas, its paradoxes and puzzles.

Although I was able to connect with hundreds of people in the small country town of Katherine from 1982 to 1986, I was not able to connect with my boss, and I suffered a great deal from my inability to deal with him effectively. My talents in Perth did not enable me to always work happily with the LSA in Belmont. After a dozen years in Perth I was worn-out in spite of any verbal talents I may have acquired by the age of 55. Perhaps this was mainly due to health problems, but conversational ability is only one of life's many talents, skills and virtues.

There is a rhythm in life, in both conversations and in the flow of pleasure and pain to our sensory receptors; and our happiness in life depends to a very large extent on the depth of our understanding of this life-process and our capacity to regulate our own life to its rhythm. Opportunity without capacity produces stress. The pioneer is given many opportunities to find out the limits of his or her capacity. Stress is just part of the ride.

I will leave this first draft of a subject I hope to turn to again and again in my 70s, and in the years of my old-age, the years after 80 according to one model of human development used by psychologists.