conversations with friends

Here’s how the Question Bowl game works: After you’re seated and settled at the table, everyone writes down a question on a small piece of paper and adds it to a bowl. You pass the bowl around and people randomly pick a question to answer aloud to the group. Here are some fun questions that’ve come up when I’ve played in the past:

• What’s something

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Hey hi hello. It's me, Ann, the yellow sweater-wearer. I gave this talk at The Love Symposium. It was called Understanding Interpersonal Conflict. Here's generally how it went: -A conflict is a disagreement. Not all disagreements escalate into fights. -Fights are caused by threat (real or perceived). Some people are more threat-sensitive than oth... See more

Friends, especially lifelong friends, are keepers of our stories, bearing witness to who we’ve been all along.

And if friends are the keepers of our stories, but there is no single friend who’s been present for each chapter—no one person to help you recall the location of that kiosk, the smell of Nürnberger sausages on a winter morning, or the poth... See more

“Say more” and “care to elaborate” are magical phrases. You can also repeat what they said. “Work has been crazy lately.” “Work has been crazy lately?” That can do a lot. The question “why is that important to you,” while more intense, can get you really far, really fast, if you sense a mood of openness, especially if you learn to ask it casually.