On being with others

How many of us feel that we spend quite a lot of our time in the company of people with whom we feel that we have nothing in common and very little to talk about? For those of us who experience a certain amount of social anxiety this can of course be quite a trial. It can lead us to feel that after all there is very little common ground between vast swathes of humanity, and on a personal level that there are very few people we can spend time with without worrying what we can say once the obvious topics of conversation are exhausted. This can lead to a feeling of alienation and separation, between groups as well as between individuals. But at times I glimpse the truth: that in fact every person on this planet has things to communicate that will mean something important to me, which will resonate in me and elicit a natural response. Being alive in the way that we are, being the sort of being for whom its own being is a question, to put it in Heidegger’s terms, is an immensely complex and infinitely rich business; everyone can speak to that, and by remaining open to the possibility of this kind of communication it’s surprising how easily, on some occasions, the ice can melt and those anxieties disappear.

Of course this doesn’t happen through having existential conversations explicitly about the meaning of being. Rather it happens through realizing that for everyone there are things that really matter to them, many of which in fact coincide with the usual recommended topics of conversation: family, work, their past life, their future life, where they live, the culture they identify with, etc. All of these are the kinds of arenas in which everyone explores the meaningfulness of life. These are the things people care about. It’s worth remembering another proposal of Heidegger’s: That our manner of existence can be spoken in a single word as “care” (in German “Sorge”): we are beings that care about what will happen to us and those we co-exist with. Realizing all of this and somehow letting it embody itself in our interactions can make even a comfortable kind of being silent together possible.

In reality, I will more often than not sit there both with friends and strangers finding that communication is awkward and resort to ‘making conversation.’ But for all of those I meet and interact with day to day: know that I always have faith that a richer mode of being-with-others is possible, a mode which I have experienced on a few occasions, which may be just as comfortable with silence as with speech. Perhaps the best name for it is love.

My lovely wife Cathy: The one person with whom, happily, I have the kind of fuller human relationship I've described at the end of this post.