everything is a conversation

notes on being in constructive dialogue with reality, instead of staying mired in delusional rigidity

“A person should have two therapists. A man who is stern and tells them how it is, and a woman who's gentle and always supportive. Ideally, the two therapists would be married to each other and had sex about 9 months before the person was born."

Drunk Wisconsin (@drunkwisconsin)

Thea • Tweet

Humans aren’t meant to excavate their inner feelings until they find their “true self.” We become ourselves in relation, not through introspection.

Laura London on Substack

When I watch a Miyazaki film I can’t help but think about his attunement to the world, the presence it requires to transmute the real world into a fantastical one. That’s the interesting contradiction of writers and artists, I suppose: alienation is a necessity, but so is participation. The point of getting better is to be more in the world.

Sindhu Shivaprasad • Tweet

Typically, the best conversations are ones that possess some degree of spontaneity. And you can encourage spontaneity. If something floats across your mind that’s unexpected, like a conversational tangent jogs a memory or idea you didn’t foresee appearing, make it part of the conversation. “For some reason, this makes me think of [x]” is fine.

Sasha Chapin • Making Normal Conversations Better - by Sasha Chapin Making Normal Conversations Better

“An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”

~ Martin Luther King Jr.

This line from David Foster Wallace still haunts me:

“The next suitable person you’re in light conversation with, you stop suddenly in the middle of the conversation and look at the person closely and say, “What’s wrong?” You say it in a concerned way. He’ll say, “What do you mean?” You say, “Something’s wrong. I can tell. What is it?”

And he’ll