It's Good To Talk

Often, we hear guys complain about how much their girlfriends talk. I usually do not see this as a good sign. If you want your significant other to talk less, or if you want to talk less with your significant other, then how do you expect to stay together happily for a long time?

Now, the criticism here lies not with guys alone. Many times, when guys complain about their girlfriends 'yakking', it's because the girls very rarely say anything worth listening to. I've spoken with such people myself. I have worked alongside girls who talk non-stop about Twilight and I don't know what irritates me more - the fact that these people applaud such poorly written trash or that they seem convinced that I would buy into it, too. And that's not even mentioning the many girls I've known who considers Perez Hilton's blog leisure reading. Some people are just thoroughly uninteresting. I hear ya. But I must raise this question: why are you with someone who doesn't interest you? With whom you don't enjoy conversing for hours?

Let me tell you one of the many things that led me to believe that my beloved was truly the one I wanted to be with. When he and I were just friends, we found ourselves chatting for hours and emailing often. One day, as I was responding to his emails, a thought occured:

I could do this for the rest of my life.

I felt that he and I could talk and talk for the rest of our lives without ever running out of things to talk about. I found him incredibly interesting. Our conversations in the beginning were rarely about ourselves or our personal lives. They were about politics, religion, philosophy, literature, and so on. Every time we talked, I grow in my understanding of things, and inadvertently, in my understanding of him. Things made more sense. We were exploring the world of ideas together, seeing things in each other's eyes. I never considered myself intelligent enough to interest him, but my interactions with him have certainly helped sharpen my mind. As our friendship developed, we eventually began talking about ourselves and asking about each other - what did you do today? What kind of music do you like? What's your family like? And so on and so forth. A whole new world has opened up; we were plumbing new depths. We were getting to know each other as persons. It was exciting.

And it still is six years later. I know we will never get bored with each other. We have life, the universe, and everything to talk about. There is still so much to learn about each other. So many things in my beloved's endlessly fascinating mind for me to discover. And this is not even mentioning the many shared experiences we are looking forward to that will connect us further and more deeply.

So please, please find someone you love talking to. And perhaps equally important, be someone worth talking to. Read more, think more. Take interest in things that matter. Faith, love, beauty, morality, living the good life, meaning, purpose, and so on. If you take a genuine interest in these things, the rest will follow. Soon, you will be looking at theology, philosophy, politics, religion, etc. We weren't created with a rational mind in order to lose it on intellectual laziness. Why is this important? Because it is important to be a whole person before we are joined with someone. And we can't demand great qualities from somebody that we don't even try to achieve ourselves. Before we seek somebody interesting, we need to be someone whom they would be interested in.