I would like to establish a certain philosophy of conversation here.
First, regarding the tenses in conversation, there are the past, the present, and the future. When engaging in small talk or discussing a specific topic, we primarily speak in the tenses of the past and the future. We discuss past experiences—what we did at a certain time—and future experiences—what we want to do at a certain time. We talk about what happened or what will happen. Beyond the events themselves, we discuss what we thought and felt, or what we might think and feel regarding those occurrences.
Small talk and thematic conversations consist of these elements: the past, present, and future, the events within the past and future, and the opinions or impressions associated with them.
In this context, “impressions” place a greater emphasis on emotion compared to logical opinions. Emotions such as joy, anger, grief, and pleasure include joys and sorrows felt with the whole body, as well as anger and enjoyment felt in the gut. Furthermore, there is the warmth (hope and kindness) and coldness (despair and loss) felt in the chest. Because these impressions are accompanied by such physicality, the exchange of these feelings fosters intimacy.
On the other hand, a “logical opinion” is something produced by concentrating one’s consciousness on the intellect. It provides a logical order to what would otherwise be a mere exchange of emotions.
Conversation is established through the balance of impressions and logical opinions, and it is the distribution of these two elements that regulates the level of intimacy.
Finally, the “present” emerges as the focal point—the base from which we speak about the past and the future.
