TO SHUSH OR NOT TO SHUSH?

-by Elaine Shobanjo

Sometimes we engage in conversations while being completely oblivious of those around us. At some point in our lives, many of us may have committed this ‘offence’.

For example, you’re in a group of 4, only 2 of you speak a certain language, you are both very aware that the other 2 don’t BUT you still go ahead and chat in your language anyway OR you’re the only girl at a table with 5 men who continue to discuss business/politics the entire night.

This was the case when Jessica attended her friend, Bisola’s graduation dinner a while ago. Bisola was married with 1 child, and had just finished medical school. Majority of her friends were either engaged or married. There were a handful of gorgeous, intelligent single women at the dinner too.

Dinner was fun, conversation was engaging but everything changed the minute Rita walked in with Yemi. He had popped the question just over a week ago and the minute they walked in, Rita joined the girls and instantly, the conversation changed to her proposal. After 30 minutes of talking about her proposal, it moved on to her wedding planning. All the married friends joined in on the marriage talk. They shared the good and the bad that they’d experienced in their marriages. And finally the mothers gushed about their kids.

Had they forgotten that there were still single girls at this dinner? It was now 2 hours since Rita walked in and nothing else, absolutely nothing else but rings, marriage and kids was mentioned. What were the single girls supposed to contribute during the last 2 hours? Was it rude of the other girls to keep yapping without taken the others into consideration? Then again, was it fair of the single girls to expect the newly engaged Rita to suppress her excitement? Had the married women and mums forgotten what else the world had to offer? Didn’t they shop anymore? Couldn’t they talk about that? Didn’t they have new businesses or projects they wanted to embark on? Couldn’t they share stories about that? Wasn’t there anything on TV show that they could all talk about?

Jessica’s story got me thinking. Do we get so absorbed in our current situation in life and find it difficult to talk about anything else but that? For example, if work is continuously annoying, do you find yourself constantly talking about work? Do we lose ourselves in life without even realising this? Do we need to take more time to consider those around us?

What do you think?