Conversations should be constructive. It should be about exploration, mutual respect. It should be fun, and reasonably challenging. A good conversation is like good poetry, or art- it inspires contemplation, reflection and thought. It helps you see familiar things in a new way, and unfamiliar things in a familiar light. It expands your mind. It provokes and excites you, and suggests possibility and opportunity. It allows you to transcend the limitations of your immediate circumstances, freeing you to explore the past, the future, and the uncontemplated vastness of the present. Good conversation is empowering.

Conversation is fundamentally about communication of information. You can communicate lots of information with minimal data (insightful, powerful, glorious) or lots of data with minimal frustration (frustrating.) Also can be described in terms of signal-to-noise ratio.

A conversation doesn’t have to be restricted to words exchanged between two individuals- it can be communication in almost any form- prayer, protest, music, sports, theater, sex. Note that the activity is not sufficient for a conversation to emerge- you can go through the motions and get nothing. Sometimes conversations happen unexpectedly, serendipitiously. It requires both recipient and transmitter to be in a conducive state of mind, in sync. In the best conversations, as in dance, it no longer becomes clear who is leading and who is following.