Talk Buddy

In the past few months, I have been having the most delightful correspondence with an Orff colleague in Korea. We had crossed paths various times in the past 25 years or so, but haven’t previously had a deep, ongoing connection. But when she wrote to me about some specific things recently, I recognized a depth to her thinking and an eloquence (with English as a second language!) that was impressive. To my delight, we continue to share our parallel thoughts in our very different (but connected) lives, thousands of miles, countries, cultures, languages, religions and more apart. 

 

In a recent e-mail, she wrote: 

 

“I occasionally visit your blog and I always come away with something — a sentence that stays with me, a question I hadn’t thought to ask, or simply that quiet sense of recognizing a kindred spirit. It never feels repetitive.”

 

 And that’s exactly how I feel when I read her letters. It makes me think of how some conversations feel like you’re trapped in a small room with no air circulating and no artwork on the walls. In others, there’s a door to a nearby room which you’d like to go visit, but your host has it padlocked. In both cases, what’s said just hangs there and goes nowhere. What’s unsaid weighs heavily in the air. 

 

But with some people, the conversation opens a window and the fresh air rushes in, bringing the room alive with its alluring scents, the sounds of singing birds and an unexpected view out to an enticing and beckoning landscape. Everyone present is refreshed and each thought or feeling expressed dances with light feet to the next needed word or idea or story. At once unexpected, a delightful surprise and deeply familiar, something always known but perhaps forgotten. 

 

Naturally, not every conversation can reach this level, not every person you talk to will connect to you (and you to them) in this way. Which makes it all the more precious when you encounter those rare conversations that help you feel known and understood and capable of knowing and understanding others. 

 

And so this public thanks to my new/old friend and my hopes that all of us have someone we can talk to on these levels, be it e-mail, phone or live conversation. A kind of “talk-buddy” that brings an intimacy, pleasure and sense of connection that goodness knows, we all can use.