Liminal Conversations

Quite a while ago now I saw a tweet which said something along the lines of that the best conversations happened in parked cars. This got me thinking about where we have our best conversations, our best thoughts, our best interactions. Of course the concept of ‘best’ is entirely subjective, but I would define that as those that we see as the most fulfilling or in-depth, or the ones that stimulate us and push us forward, whether within ourselves or in our relationships with others. I am interested in the talk that happens in between.

I have had this line of thought bubbling away in my head for a while now, and have since come to the tentative conclusion that the best of life occurs on the edges. As we are stuck in this period of stasis, we reflect on when life was ‘happening’. But it is not the large chunks of activity where unexpected things happen, it is the bits in between, the bits that form the boundary between one activity and another, the bits that we never really expect anything from.

We can sit in silence for an entire car journey, only to burst into conversation as we come to a halt, as we are expected to catapult ourselves into the next moment, but instead linger in the present one. In a car, our conversations can become fluid, always containing a kinetic potential, never necessarily tethered to a single place.

We have our best thoughts as we drift into sleep, our best conversations as we say goodbye. We flit around the edges, and anchor ourselves to the known. But we all live in liminal spaces; none of us are completely one thing or another. We spread out, we flit, we drift and dissipate – and so do our conversations.

There is a pleasant irony in the fact that sometimes our most whole conversations take place within the most fragmented moments; the moments in between. Moments of transition, of momentary stasis before a change. Our words latch on to moments that can only be brief, wishing to extend them – and sometimes succeeding. Bending and stretching time for a few treasured moments.