Sure, I'll die on that hill
The vitality and hospitality of exaggeration
I spent a long weekend with my parents, sans husband and children, and it felt like this dreamy return to adolescence: to have daily long conversations with Mom in the garden, over cups of tea; to talk about British interiors and church and family and hermeneutics and polyphenols; to walk around the neighborhood and to and from the farmers’ market; to play games with and tease Dad; to pick on my brother at dinner.
It was rare, and sweet, to be able to reflect on my childhood with them and to consider how very old I am now. (While there, I ran into the mom of a kid I used to babysit. In my mind, he is still 8. I asked after him, and she said, “He’s great; he has an MBA now.” I gasped. I am ancient.)
My mother and father are lovely and resilient and closer than ever. My brother is a tender-hearted man. The little maple sapling in the front yard is now a towering tree.
How to have more interesting discussions
Most group discussions tend to be tedious, in the way that committees are tedious.
Everyone is politic and polite. You mince words. You deploy euphemisms. You defer. You smile little half-smiles and nod. Some mediocre decision is reached, some milky compromise.
This is how most group discussions go.
But if you’re lucky, it’ll go in a different direction. You may be fortunate enough to find yourself in a group discussion with a hyperbolic person. A person who is ready to throw down a hard opinion. A person who wants to start something. A person who pierces the diplomatic current with a spear.
I live for this moment.
Sure, these characters can sometimes be bullies or brutes, but when they’re in it for more than dominion—when they’re motivated by curiosity or insight or passion or affection or loyalty—buckle up. It’s about to get good and heated.
The hard opinion is framed in absolutes. The opinion is usually an exaggeration. It’s over the top. It’s rooted in hyperbole. But, oh! It feels like we might be getting somewhere, when this insouciant soul says something a bit astonishing. When it happens, if you’re lucky enough for it to happen, I’m all in.
To the group-discussion disruptor, exaggeration is essential.
The rhetorical gesture of hyperbole is vital to a debate. To get your point across, you need to make a grand statement. It’s OK if it’s extreme. It’s OK if someone can find a small outlier. The truth is comfortable writ large. It can handle exceptions to a rule. Go big or go home.
Mealy-mouthed, weak-willed statements, all cushioned with relative asides, are useless. Such conversational platitudes are ubiquitous, but you might as well say nothing at all. There’s nothing to sink your teeth into. There’s nothing to run with.
To really get somewhere, you have to overplay your hand. To make a point, especially in a spoken forum, you have to speak boldly. You have to underline.
Because—and here’s the beautiful thing—exaggeration is an invitation. People who would otherwise sit in silence when a mundane opinion is codified will suddenly speak up when someone hyperbolic takes a stand. Hyperbole is hospitable. The floor opens up. People get pulled into the flow. They can’t help themselves. A real discussion is now under way.
I was blessed to observe this principle in action at a recent lunch at work.
Polite comments were being exchanged about activities and athletics: which sports people liked, what they watched, where they worked out.
In a lull, my colleague W. flicked his gaze over the table of a dozen people and said calmly, “Yes, but all sports are immoral. No moral argument can be made for sports, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy them.”
A stunned silence fell over the table. I smiled hugely. He was suddenly quite unpopular, and it was wonderful. People who would normally stay silent now had a lot to say to him. The conversation now involved everyone, instead of a vocal minority. We had a scintillating conversation, now far-ranging with many different opinions, and were all enriched because of it. All because someone dared to say something grand and extreme.1
The diplomat, the committee chair, looks down on the hyperbolic soul. They stir things up; they cause problems. But it’s a misplaced contempt. God bless the group-discussion rabble-rousers. No matter their intentions, they open the door for others. The room becomes larger. The table is receptive to more voices because of their exaggerated dissent.
That said, here are some
Conversations I will always check out of
I’ll be so far into the stratosphere with a fixed smile on my face if you start talking about
Your feelings about the weather
Sports games, famous men who play sports games and how they play them, the outcomes of sports games, the sports games teams you idolize/despise
Running, how you run, how much you run, how much you love running, how much your body hurts because of how much you love running
How you got to a particular destination (which roads you used, the traffic you did or did not encounter, theories on better roads to use and not use)
Taylor Swift
Maybe don’t talk to me at all?? I’m not a nice person! (Apparently this letter just wants you to know that I have a deep-seated vendetta against athletics!)
Called or uncalled
Carl Jung had a stone carved above the door of his house with the words: Vocatus atque non vocatus, Deus aderit.
Meaning: Called or uncalled, God will be present.
When asked about it, he wrote in a letter:
“By the way, you seek the enigmatic oracle Vocatus atque non vocatus deus aderit in vain in Delphi: it is cut in stone over the door of my house in Kusnacht near Zurich and otherwise found in Erasmus’s collection of Adagia (XVIth cent.). It is a Delphic oracle though. It says: yes, the god will be on the spot, but in what form and to what purpose? I have put the inscription there to remind my patients and myself: Timor dei initium sapiente [‘The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.’] Here another not less important road begins, not the approach to ‘Christianity’ but to God himself and this seems to be the ultimate question.”
God will be on the spot, but in what form and to what purpose?
(The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.)
Currently reading
Undaunted Courage, Stephen E. Ambrose
The Answers, Catherine Lacey
Greenlanders, Jane Smiley
OK, fine, it helps that I agree with him, but it’s still a great example of my overall point.
Ha! You just described my husband! "Exaggeration is an invitation." We have way too many of these discussions, starting with his strong, sudden statements. Drives me nuts sometimes but our conversations never cease to pique my interest. And yes to your list of please, I don't want to hear this. Please. Stop.
One Christmas with his very Catholic family the conversation was sputtering, my husband who lives to stir the pot picked up his wine glass and said, “The Pope is a commie.”