I recently read Paper Towns by John Green. The novel, which focuses on two high school students, was entirely inappropriate, demographically speaking. It departed significantly from the sorts of things that a family man in his late 30s is supposed to read. But I was inspired nonetheless. It challenged me to think about the art of discussion and how our conversations reveal what we care about most.
The book tells the story of Quentin and Margo, two teenagers who are pulled by their longings into adventure. Margo longs for an exciting life and Quentin longs for Margo. There’s a scene in which our protagonists sneak into the top floor of an office building in the middle of the night. They make their way into a dimly lit conference room as the lights of their Florida suburb twinkle outside. Gazing through the large windows, Margo says, “I’ve lived here for eighteen years and I have never once in my life come across anyone who cares about anything that matters.”
As Margo sees it, all of the people in her life, young and old alike, are distracted by triviality. They obsess over grades or chores, or distract themselves with gossip. But no one seems to be engaged in that most human of activities: thinking about and discussing things of real importance.
I sympathize with Margo. As a being made in God’s image, it would be a kind of sacrilege to live out my days in diversion. I wouldn’t do justice to God’s image if my sole concerns in life were football scores or home renovations. People like Margo should notice something different about me. In fact, they should be able to say, “I’ve never come across anyone who cares about anything that matters, except for this weird Christian.”
So, what can we do? I propose the radical act of talking to one another, live and in person, about real things. Between bad jokes and embellished stories, we could discuss justice, education, cosmology, and linguistics. We could stay up too late for the sake of real fellowship, and in so doing remind ourselves that we are in this world, but not of it.
Hopefully our conversations will be an encouragement to those around us. But, even if they go unnoticed, they will not have been in vain. Good conversation is valuable in and of itself. It is a humanizing activity and a welcome antidote to our current state of distraction and political polarization.
Look for more thoughts on this in the weeks that follow.