Have you ever asked a stranger on the street about the meaning of life? Have you ever discussed you hopes and dreams with the cashier? Unless you'd be the last drunk and lonely costumer at a bar who has nobody else to talk to, You would usually not do that.

That is what we have small talk for: To dim the uncomfortable silence. However, unless you're talking to an astrologist, chatting about the weather can get quite boring. Sometimes though, I think smalltalk is way worse than silence. However, people struggle to have deep conversations with people they don't know and don't have this foundation of trust with. 

Last week, I learned that it doesn't take yearlong friendships to have a meaningful conversation, but just an open mind. I made this realization thanks to Orbis, one of our committees at UCG. They came up with the amazing idea of a deep talk session. When I heard the idea at first, I was a bit puzzled. 'How can you force deep talk?' I thought.. The session worked as followed: Everyone was seated at a table facing one other person, a little bit like on a date. Each couple had a bowl with questions and in every round, one of the questions was discussed for 5 minutes. After that, everyone rotated so they were facing a different person in the next round. The questions were a mixture of philosophical, personal and just pretty bizarre questions. I guess nobody's ever been asked before whether they preferred to fight 100 duck sized horses or one horse sized duck.

Before the session, I actually thought I would be super uncomfortable sharing personal things with people I rarely know. Soon it occurred to me that it was actually quite refreshing to know that the person you are talking to, is not arranging the information in a huge web of stuff they already know about you, but they listen completely unbiased to what you have to say. What really struck me was how everybody thinks in such a different way and takes every question from a completely different angle. Throughout the session, I experienced so many moments that made me feel sort of enlightened as they stimulated me to alter my own patterns of thinking.

Now, I want you to encourage you to think about some of the questions I had to reflect upon in the event. The questions really stuck with me so I felt like sharing some of my thoughts but also some of the other's inspiring thoughts.

What was the most unsettling film you've ever seen?
Beasts of no nation. It is a narrative of a child who get's recruited to join a group of rebels and become a child soldier. The movie displays some of the most harshest realities of war: The loss of Childhood. 

Would you rather want to be able to look into the future or into the past?
First of all, I would not want to look into the future. We humans have long outsmarted what Nature might have foreseen for us so let there remain some of the oblivion that makes us human. The ability to look into the future would shatter dreams and undermine ambition. At the same time, I think it would be cool to look into the past but through an unbiased lens, so not aware of the present. 

If you could go back, is there something you would tell your younger self?
I remember one of the answers to that question inspired me. I would not tell my younger self anything, since you need to make your own mistakes to grow from them. 

After the Shame project has been such a success, it does not surprise me that this activity went just as well. UCG is built on the foundations of tolerance, diversity and open-mindedness which makes it the perfect environment for that. I really hope for this to become a regular activity and I think an activity like this could be implemented in a lot of places. I am sure that for example in a company or organization, it could probably significantly benefit the working environment. So, next time you're at the hairdresser and the convo dies down, you know what to do!