conversation is an engine

Please Write This Book

I want to read this book. I’ll even buy this book.

I want to read about how I could approach anyone—from total stranger to my most inbred colleague—and engage in a conversation that starts a process that helps us say things we didn’t know we knew.

Please tell about how it works that two or three or four people can find themselves in a conversation where they invent new, practical ideas by listening to each other and pitching in what they know.

Tell me the conditions required for that kind of social invention. Tell me how trust between people works to grease the communication cogs. Please point out how respecting others—no matter their background/skin color/accent—opens a door for deep listening and profound hearing. Please provide hopeful stories about how people have bridged religious and political and cultural chasms to create something brand new that completely mesmerized them and changed their lives.

Tell me how people engage in making meaning from their first words together. What kind of people are these and how do we become these kinds of people?

That’s the book I want to read and own. Please include juicy footnotes from deep thinkers from years past. And include a bibliography that I can pore over and order up brand new thoughts. Please point out the smart and talented people who have traveled this path.

Please let it be 312 pages long and let it cost $23.99, but seed copies through Abe Books. I want to find a marked-up version (with sly annotations and witty marginalia) for $5.23 and free shipping.

But hurry! I need to start reading your book yesterday.

Write it today and I’ll order it tomorrow.

###

Image Credit: Kirk Livingston