"Great minds discuss ideas" -- Like what?

AlwaysGrateful

Sun, May 26 2024, 10:16 pm

So when I was a teenager, I loved the quote...

"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."

I had a small circle of close friends that I had great DMCs with, all about the purpose of life, what type of future I wanted for myself, what type of guy I wanted to marry (okay, so this was in my late teens), hashing out different haskafos and which parts of them were good/bad/neutral, etc.

I am now well past my teens. I still have a couple of those old friends that I speak with on a regular basis, but now our conversations usually consist of us talking about our kids while trying not to say anything that would be loshon hara about them (my oldest is at the age that I was when I was friends with them, so they're not little kids anymore).

Both with my good friends from long ago and my okay friends from now (as a mom I'm too busy to develop any new relationships that are as deep as the ones I had then), I find myself struggling to find things to talk about. I'm not interested in politics, and never have been. I listen to shiurim regularly but they don't end up in my conversation all that often except maybe as a two-minute "isn't this an interesting idea?" and then it peters out quickly. And the conversations that I had as a teenager are either terribly judgy (maybe my friend does some of the things I am about to criticize, or maybe it sounds like I'm saying I'm so holy that I feel this thing is essential/awful), not applicable (I'm not talking about who I want to marry anymore, or the type of home I want to have), or obvious (I've found answers to the hashkafic questions that I used to have, and the questions don't even seem all that interesting anymore).

And forget about small talk. It's all about people or about fluff. I'm nervous to ask questions that are too intrusive so the conversation is so boring and shallow and barely scrape the surface of who the person is.

So if you're a couple of decades post teenagehood, and you think that you discuss IDEAS with your friends...what do you discuss?

AlwaysGrateful

Sun, May 26 2024, 10:47 pm

thegiver wrote:

Shalom bayis
Chinuch
Hashkofa
Personal growth
Patience
Happiness
Slowing down
Self care
Books

I hope it's okay I'm going to pick on some of your answers. I'm really just trying to figure out how this would work in realtime.

Shalom Bayis -- How would that conversation go without talking about dh? I almost never talk about dh to my friends (other than something pareve like "the funniest thing happened to dh last week").

Chinuch -- This was a major source of conversation when my older kids were little and I was trying to figure out how to respond to certain issues that cropped up. But now my older kids are at the age that I can't really talk about the issues they're dealing with, unless it's a real to'eles. Not if I'm just shmoozing with a friend. And my younger kids are dealing with things that I've mostly already dealt with before. Anything more than that has a "holier than thou" feel, like "Look at this amazing chinuch thing I do with my kids."

Hashkafa, personal growth, patience, happiness -- How do these conversations go? How do they start? Do they seem forced at first? Do some people seem turned off when you start talking about these topics?

Revafe

Sun, May 26 2024, 11:12 pm

I'll give you some conversation ideas.

How much should parents be involved in their grandkids chinuch? Is it ok for ure mother to question your parenting? If not, what if they're severe issues?

How bad is helicopter parenting? How to keep balance?

Is anxiety as prevalent as it seems? Are we creating it? Are therapists creating it? Were there always ppl suffering from it but undiagnosed...

Divorce-are they good that it's so normalized? Are all divorces warranted?

Smartphones- Both extremes. Can we live without it forever? Is there way to use it responsibly?

Online campaigns-is it overdone? The pressure to give? The incentives

School power-

Social norms

Communal standards

mha3484

Sun, May 26 2024, 11:15 pm

Revafe wrote:

I second this. This is all stuff my friends and I talk about.