Not Much to Say

The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.
George Bernard Shaw

Recently I've found that I have had nothing to say. Have you ever felt that way?

In conversation with others, I've had virtually nothing to contribute. Oh, an idea might flash, an opinion might come to mind - but the energy required to formulate the opinion into something more than half baked has been more effort than I've wanted to invest. Thus, the thought hasn't made it passed my lips. In a word, I've been lazy.

I've felt shallow. Boring. Uninteresting. Dull. Blank. My responses have amounted to a lot of "hmm's and huh's." Unfinished sentences left dangling. Questions left unexplored. Mental shrugs of "I dunno...."

For example, last night the question of why people research their ancestry arose. Why do people need to look into their past? I listened to the conversation feeling overwhelmed by the question. The answer seemed quite obvious to me. Our need to understand who we are - to come to know ourselves - is one of the driving forces of human nature. Identity and self may be defined in any number of ways - but coming to know our story - the narrative of our lives- the evolution of our family history within a greater context of time, place, culture, society, and circumstance gives us insight and perspective. The "then" is contrasted with the "now." By looking into the family history and genealogy, pieces of ourselves become clearer - our personality, our level of determination, our addictions, the patterns - Isn't this why adopted children go in search of their birth parents?

The diagram of a family tree, each branch bearing names and dates of distant relatives - strangers really, also contains their untold stories. The stories of survival and loss. The stories of joy and heartbreak. The stories of courage and cowardice. Their dreams, their hopes for a better future, their failures. Boom and bust. Black sheep and golden. Robust and sickly. The unlikely and predictable. The stories that shape the trajectory of a family against the back drop of chance, luck, fortune, opportunity, and instinct.

The desire to know begins, I think, with curiosity. It is sustained by a love of story. It is fueled by imagination. It is deepened by a need to understand.

I guess it is no surprise that I am to the core, a dramatist.

But last night, I didn't say any of that.

Sometimes, conversation is just too much energy. Thoughts emerge. The thread of one thought connects to the thread of someone else's. A debate may ensue requiring defending one's position, the parsing of words, the recitation of statistics, the retrieval of a fact buried deep in the recesses of one's mind - the frustrating feeling of "I used to know that."

There's a lot to talk about these days. The economy. The achievement gap in education. The budget. Nutrition. Technology. The state of healthcare. There's a lot to feel bad about. How one parented. The choices one made. The passage of time. Getting old. Whether to get a colonoscopy or not. People getting sick. Terrorism.

I just don't want to talk about it.