by Kathy Vandermark

Created on: October 06, 2008

The police arrived on the spot, an ambulance not far behind, whipping into the paved driveway which ran along the side of the house. The uniformed men entered the house to search for the dead man, as recorded by a caller. "Where is he?" asked the ambulance driver. "Over here!" shouted one policeman. There he was, sprawled out on the floor, a man in maybe his late fifties, dead.

As the policeman tried to learn things about him, none of the neighbors could tell them anything about the man, other than his name was Clarence and he was gone every day from eight to five. His license confirmed, Clarence Truman. With a little detective work, they found him to have a grown son and grown daughter, both married and living on the other side of town. They also found that he worked in a toy factory, breaking plastic molded pieces off of their frames.

The eulogy, which was given by the pastor was hard, for no one really knew much about Clarence Truman, including the pastor, who knew Clarence attended his church every week. How could Clarence have known so many people, yet no one knew anything about him?

This is our current lifestyle. People don't know much about each other because we are all self-centered. We have so much to do in our own scheduled lives, that there isn't time to include such nonsense things as sitting and chatting with people. We have lost the art of conversation. Our conversations take place in grocery stores and waiting rooms, when we happen to run across an old friend. We learn just enough to know each other are fine and hear a quick summary of what each other are doing in life these days.

We are missing out on good therapy, knowledge, and insight. We need to feel that people care for us and how can we know, when people don't ever have time to find out how we are truly feeling and what we are dealing with in life? We miss knowledge. We don't have time to listen to other people's experiences, which could be an asset to our own lives. We don't have time for those stories. Through conversations, we get insight to our own lives. Talking about our problems out loud, helps us put some perspective on the heart of the problem.

And we may try to fool ourselves by saying we talk to some quite often on the internet. But for most, it isn't conversation. It is a quick "Hello," and a message about the subject.

We do love the people we know, so why is it that we can't find time for them? It is because our schedules are full, and so when we do get a break on the calendar somewhere,

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