Hundreds of comments followed each other, full of evidence, data and firm affirmations. In the end, not many people changed their views. Only emotions became hotter and the distance between people became further. It seems we are living in an era where everyone wants to become a lawyer for their point of view. What is worth mentioning is that many people no longer debate to find the right thing, but to prove they are right.
He has a very intelligent friend. Reading a lot, remembering for a long time, arguing sharply like a razor. In each conversation, just if someone mistook a number, mistook a timeline, or quoted missing a sentence, a few minutes later his phone will show enough documents to prove it. Once, he jokingly asked: "Do you still often meet friends this weekend?". He laughed: "I don't understand why everyone is busy". He just laughed along. Maybe they are not busy. It's just that no one wants a coffee session to turn into a court session, where each sentence must have evidence and each opinion is waiting to be refuted. Because in life, not every conversation needs a winner, but often just one person willing to listen.
The most difficult thing in communication is listening to the end. Listening to understand, not to find weaknesses in other people's arguments. A wife tells her husband stories at work. What she often needs is not a logical analysis, but just a sentence: "I feel sorry for you, you've worked hard." A child presents a newly drawn painting that is still stained with color and not dry. What it waits for is not feedback on proportions or perspectives, but the interested eyes of parents. Even the elderly are like that. They recount old stories not necessarily because their memory is weak, but because they still want to know who is willing to sit and listen.
People sometimes need to be understood more than corrected. Youth often likes to win in every debate. Growing up, they understand that there are times of silence not because they are out of reason, but because they still have feelings. Life is not a debate. What remains is people who still want to sit next to us after all disagreements. Perhaps, experience does not lie in always being able to say the last sentence.
But lies in knowing how to stop before that last sentence. Because it is indeed a capacity. But knowing how to keep a relationship from breaking down because of your right, that is a quality. If a relationship has to die to prove you are right, then that right, in the end, is also a failure.
