Listening to intelligent people speak, or having an intelligent argument or conversation with someone, will always be one of my favourite things.
There’s just something wholesome about listening to someone go deep into a topic they genuinely love. I leave their presence with extra knowledge because they somehow manage to touch on things I hadn’t even discovered yet. It’s also oddly cute watching someone ramble about something that means the world to them.
They’re giving you point after point, connecting ideas, dissecting things, and you’re just sitting there nodding, taking it all in. You may not even have much to say because you’re too busy absorbing what they’re saying.
I think this is more of a reflection post because it takes me back to my university days.
Ever since I finished university, although I’m still waiting to get my statement of results, I’ve mostly been at home, working and just dancing to the rhythm of life. I haven’t had a truly deep, stimulating conversation with someone the way I did one particular day in school.
There was this girl who was my coursemate. She was always quiet in class, but I noticed that she was very attentive. During one Gender Studies class, the lecturer asked a question about a particular topic and, for the first time, she spoke up. The class, which had been noisy and rowdy, went quiet as she spoke with so much confidence, grace and intelligence that I think I can speak for everyone when I say we were all gobsmacked. She knew what she was talking about.
When exam season came that semester, I found her one day sitting under a tree, revising. I took a seat beside her and asked if she could fill me in on what she had gathered so far. And she did, rather beautifully.
She went so deep into the topic of gender that I was genuinely fascinated. She dissected theories, laid them completely bare for me to examine, connected different ideas, and then somehow stitched everything back together so neatly that it all made sense.
I left that conversation thinking, yeah, this is someone I need to keep close.
Most of the books I’ve read since then were books she recommended to me. Even now, I never miss her status updates. They’re usually a mixture of knowledge, wit and those little thoughts that make you stop scrolling for a second and the funny thing is, that conversation actually helped me during the exam. The particular topic she had spent so much time explaining to me ended up being one of the questions.
I walked into that exam and wrote my answer with so much ease and understanding. I knew exactly what I wanted to say because she had helped me see the topic differently. That entire experience has lived rent free in my mind for a while now.
This whole idea just reminded me that sometimes, one conversation with the right person can teach you more than hours of staring at a textbook. Intelligent people are worth having around.
I love being around people who think deeply, question things, know what they’re talking about and aren’t afraid to explore an idea until they’ve squeezed every drop of meaning out of it. I love people who can make me think. People who introduce me to ideas I’ve never considered, people who can ramble about something they love and somehow make me love listening to them ramble.
I want to keep mixing myself with people like that because I absolutely adore people who think and speak like classic art. There’s something beautiful about them.
