The Top Ten Best, Most Important, Spectacular, Amazing Conversations You Probably Had in 2020.
Let’s be relentlessly positive, and practice noticing the amazing conversations we’ve made happen in 2020.
Let’s be relentlessly positive, and practice noticing the amazing conversations we’ve made happen in 2020. As part of the list of 10, I thought I’d point out my own examples but also other places we’ve seen these conversations happen both this year and throughout human history. Don’t worry history sounds hard but it’s totally fun.
1.) Our Conversations about mourning and loss — I reflected deeply this year on the death of my mother June Dust and of the tragic death of my brother Nathaniel Dust. This reflection led me into greater conversations about mourning and grief with myself, my living family, and my friends. This kind of reflection this year in particular I know was shared and felt by many of us in our own ways. With the death of George Floyd, Chadwick Boseman, and RBG, all against the backdrop of a growing pandemic, 2020 was a year for mourning and loss. But without mourning, we cannot go on. In fact, it is arguably our most powerful form of conversation. Protests and movements are mourning. Singing and laughter are forms of grieving. 2020 forced us to encounter our grief and our mourning head-on. That kind of conversation should always be noted and celebrated because it is universal. Humans have experienced loss and consequently the need to grieve and mourn together going back to before the first Ice Age. This kind of conversation is as timeless as it is invaluable. We would do well to remember this and celebrate it together.
2.) Our Conversations with our pets — I was on a chilly afternoon hike with “Suki the Dog” one day this fall. She lagged behind and I called out to her to come but she insisted on staying perched on a hill about 50 yards away. I assumed she was being stubborn and gestured over the other side of the hill. I was like “Oh right, I’m leaving David my husband behind.” David appeared quickly thereafter and we were on our way, a happy little pack.
For many this year, our pets became our closest friends and companions. I have heard from many of my friends who have expressed a feeling of gratitude for their pet’s companionship during lockdowns or quarantines not to mention a sense of awe with respect to how in-tune and intuitive their dogs were. Research on this has only confirmed what we already knew instinctively about our pets like that our dogs can read facial expressions, express empathy, communicate jealousy, grieve, help us mourn, and follow along with TV shows. Not to mention they are terrific companions in Grief.
It’s time to remember that we have always had interspecial communication with the beasts around us. Horses and cows have allowed us to become agrarian while canids helped us become apex predators. It’s a good moment to get reacquainted with the beasts in your life.
3.) Conversations with our ancestors — I LOVE cooking with my mother and brother we’re both chef’s and so I learned so much by just co-existing with them. When they died I became the chef in the family (I actually became the only one in my family… At first, I used cookbooks but then gradually started cooking intuitively from recipes my relatives had cooked over the years. This forced return to the kitchen put me back in contact with my ancestors by way of family recipes handed down through the generations. Cooking my Aunt Mary and Aunt Bea’s pierogi was a special highlight. In a particularly strange conversation with my Great Grandma Alma Blaker, it was the smell of Roast Beef, a small warm breeze, and the caress of the word “Honey” (her nickname for me that told me she had just died, her last conversation with me happened when I was alone in a city park 25 years ago.
4.) Conversations With Fauci — Ok I get it he wasn’t just talking to me but…for me one of the best communicators and extended conversations this year was had by Dr. Anthony Fauci. Simple, calm, relatable by all. A master class in the power of clarity and simplicity in language. (And then of course Brad Pitt played him on SNL for one of the more touching Thank You’s I’ve ever seen. I still get weepy at that.
The conversations that people like Fauci inspired us to have were two-fold. First, that we should and can have difficult conversations about the risks and dangers of a virus without needing politics to guide those conversations. And more importantly, Covid has forced us to all have conversations about science and medicine and healthcare that we might not ever have had otherwise. The language of health care and the language of people in need of health care has never been so subtly mixed. Words that we didn’t understand we soon were using in everyday language and words that no one really understood got simplified and clarified. This is only the beginning of a conversation we need to be having. Healthcare has always felt more like incomprehensible magic than it really should. Let’s get really clear here in 2021.
5.) Countryside Conversations — My husband and I consider our primary residence to be in the small town of Bovina, New York. We made that leap and left our apartment in New York City behind. Here’s the thing about Bovina; it has always been a blend of urban and rural and that blend is both harmonious and mutually helpful. This is not the Hamptons. It’s 3 and a half hours northwest of New York you don’t end up here by accident.
Early in the pandemic, I remember sitting on the lawn with my Trump-voting neighbor who hunts our property and who also happens to be an EMT. We sat together as he talked through the trauma of what it was like to be assigned to the Bronx at the height of the pandemic. He recounted to me all of the terrible things he had witnessed because he couldn’t bear to share with his wife and daughter.
We are watching a great urban-rural blur and this is a remedy we’ve needed in the United States for generations. There will be growing pains but conversations like the one I had with my EMT neighbor humanize the both of us. They highlight our shared humanity, our shared commitment to each other as neighbors, and most importantly our trust in each other beyond our political affiliations. 2020 was an incredibly divided and isolating year. But the mixing of city slickers with rural Americans reminded us that there is cause for hope and healing and that the hardest conversations we need to have are worth it. Also, he has some great venison recipes.
6.) Our celebrations. It was a hassle. We tested. We quarantined before and after. But we managed to get it safe enough so that we could have our friend, a single mother in Manhattan, and her daughter over for Thanksgiving. I know this makes us one of the lucky few. I know many people, especially those in cities, were unable to celebrate with anyone outside of their immediate household in this way. But it was a reminder to not take these moments of celebration and community for granted. Believe it or not, in a house where I’m sure generations before had prayed, we held hands and prayed before dinner. It wasn’t exactly religious. She’s Jewish, we’re nothing just ”of faith” (though I might think Jesus was pretty cool…I digress.) The important thing here is to remember is to not take those you gather with for granted, to celebrating singing, dancing, cooking, and any chance we get to give love. It’s all we have to give in the end.
7.) Our Conversations with Taylor — Well for me it was Taylor Swift’s album Folklore. Her appearance at the American country awards and the gratitude for people mixing and remixing her songs has been extraordinary to experience. What seems like singing was really an artful form of dialogue with her fans and other musicians. Granted, if Folklore came out at any time I would have felt it was worthy of a top-ten list, but this year especially COME ON! 2020 may have prevented us from going to concerts and group events and forced us back into our headphones and playlists. It provided us an opportunity to go into deep dialogue with the artists we love on a more personal level. To explore music we might not otherwise have had the time for or take chances on new artists. It also gave us the chance to really sit with an album in full. If songs are a conversation then a full album is a relationship, and this year found us in newer, deeper relationships with our favorite musicians in ways many of us haven’t experienced since high school.
8.) Our Conversations with Art — One of the highlights of 2020 for me was getting to premier the documentary My Family Trees for my close friend Roshi Givechi’. It was her, my husband, and two other artists socially distanced in our living room. It was powerful. It was cathartic. It reminded me that during times of stress and chaos isn’t a luxury good but rather a necessity.
In order for Art to be consumed and appreciated, it requires us to make space for it. This year, whether we wanted it or not, provided us that space. I recall hearing from many of my friends how, as the pandemic months waned on, their desire for deep and meaningful art and literature and music and poetry and filmmaking increased. They didn’t want to watch the old sitcoms or read the poolside novels (although Schitt’s Creek and the Tommy Knockers were my two faves and I’m pretty sure more than a few people returned to Harry Potter which is not the same as JK Rowling. They were hungry for something real. And besides what is great Art if not the beginning of a great conversation. No strike that reading, watching, binging is in fact a conversation into itself.
9) Our Conversations with Colleagues- If you were lucky enough to stay employed some of the conversations that required the greatest care we’re with our teams, colleagues, and bosses. For my team, we set up a series of rules on March 1 when it was clear we’d be working remotely. Some of the rules were: 1. Design the human in. 2. If you don’t need to be in a meeting feel free to skip it. 3. Wild Card Day — something goes wrong we drop everything to help you with what you need even if it’s just to listen to you cry. The result for us was that my team has been especially bonded and feels something akin to love — please keep in mind that if you pay someone it’s not ok to assume they love you and that sometimes you only ever know they love you when they quit.
By the way, these rules would be good for the workplace, pandemic or not.
10) Conversations about Rules- Because really we should always be having them anyway. What’s appropriate in the workplace and how can we feel safe entering each other’s homes? Is what’s happening consensual? Is everyone safe? These are not rules of the Pandemic these are just good practices that will allow us to navigate and survive life a little better. So consider 2020 as the best practice you never got at setting and resetting the rules of conversations.
Coda: Why I Won’t Do a 10 worst conversations of the year list.
In my research for my book Making Conversation, I did a lot of research into the power of naming something. As I was writing about a review of Alex McFarland’s Lost Words I came across the psychological phenomenon of “frequency illusion.” The idea that once you notice something once, your brain then primes you to see it all the time. This is why Alex wanted to write about acorns — which recently had been removed from the dictionary — so that we wouldn’t stop seeing acorns. While I personally want to believe 1,111 spirits are watching out for me and this is obviously why I coincidentally happen to look at the clock when it strikes 11:11 so frequently, in reality I know it’s actually just frequency illusion at play.
It’s in this spirit that I’ve decided to abstain from highlighting the bad conversations in 2020 and instead focus on the positive ones in hopes that the more we notice them the more we really start to see them around us.
https://www.history.com/news/world-war-i-armistice-germany-allies
