When a recent telephone conversation wound down to the disconnecting phase, I said “see you” at the same time the other party said “goodbye.” Since we had each stepped on the other’s statement, we attempted a repeat, with the same comic result. Disconnections are not always easy.
When I was in high school, I had a telephone installed in my room. I spent hours on it, talking to my high school girlfriend and one other friend. The growth of my social circle outpaced my social skills however, and I developed a rather abrupt way of ending those early telephone conversations. When I had no more to say, I did not rummage around in the conversational bag looking for leftover subjects. I merely said, “This conversation is over,” and hung up.
Not all were fans of my abrupt approach, which I dragged into my early twenties. After I married, my bride took incoming calls; I made infrequent calls to my brothers, sister and my mother. When I got a job that required me to both take and make business calls, I was forced to develop a more socially acceptable telephone manner, though my personal calls still remained brief and brisk. Then some things happened that made me rethink my methods and I mellowed, though I still did not make a lot of personal phone calls.
I used to communicate with my friends using pen and paper; I wrote of what was on my mind, what I saw in a particular day and how I felt about the experience of living. I asked no questions and expected no answers in the letters, and they did not always write back. But when we would meet in person, we could intertwine the developing stories of our lives. We are now too busy for that kind of quiet intimacy.
I have tumbling and trampled conversations with a good friend in Florida; she calls me on her cellphone when she is on the way to or from some purpose other than to speak to me. Reaching her destination provides her with a natural end-point to the call, which is when we begin the “adieu” dance. We fumble into termination and hang up. Perhaps it is the greater disconnect, the societal distancing that makes a graceful exit from a conversation difficult for me. But it may be that my social interactions have not evolved in the same way that others have, with the “sound and fury” of the impersonal e-mail, text and tweet.
Some of my difficult disconnections may be the result of a personal commitment to a philosophy that says that “goodbye” is permanent and that “see you” indicates that the relationship is not over and that I will “see you,” anon. “Goodbye” is the more recognized conversational stopper. But I have to consider the possibility that others are symptomatic of my personal disconnections: my Florida friend is in a new phase of her life, and we have moved away from each other. Another friend has telephone conversations that are the verbal equivalent of the annual Christmas letter: a long and unbroken outpouring of events, ending with, “So? How are you?”
There is a line in a song by Mike & the Mechanics that says, “we can listen as well as we hear,” but we have an instant society that pressures us to immediately share an opinion or comment. We are in a hurry to hear, to crash into the conversational pause, having spent no time in listening and reflecting.
I remember the quiet joy of contented silence, which cannot be shared electronically. And that may be the greater disconnection.