The long conversation 

There’s where you live. There’s where you work or go to school. And then there’s the “third place”. The third place is a space that facilitates relaxing social interaction with people other than those you live or work with. It is a place where you encounter “regulars,” or frequenters of a space, as well as potential new connections. Third places tend to foster light and pleasant conversation, often over a favored beverage or a shared experience.

The term “third place” originates from a 1989 book, The Great Good Place, by sociologist Ray Oldenberg. While such places have been around from the beginning, Oldenberg was the first to name them and help us recognize their growing significance in fragmented, fast-paced urban life.

Third places are spaces where, in the words of our friend Sundeep Salins from Blend Coffee in Perth (Scotland), “the long conversation can take place.”Customers come into a safe space, into what he endeavors to make “the warmest room in the village,” regularly and over time.They get to know one another, and the staff, and share the stuff of their lives.Getting to the transcendental comes at a natural, Spirit-led pace.

At the Agathe Center we see “third place” businesses like cafés and fitness centers as ideal for impact because of the way they facilitate “the long conversation.”But what is true about third place businesses, when it comes to the clientele, is true about all businesses, in the sense that regular relating happens over long-term periods. There is space for long conversations with employees, suppliers, and service providers that can carry on over years – and that is often what it takes.

Most people need some time to hear, to think, to observe, to contemplate. The long conversation offers that opportunity.At times, we may feel a push, even a sense of urgency to accelerate the conversation. Responding to that is often appropriate, but typically that’s the exception. The rule is more often that it takes a long conversation for a person to be heard, care to be expressed, trust to be built, and understanding to be grasped. And there’s hardly any more effective way of doing that than building third place spaces like Blend. Raise a glass to “the long conversation.”

Ralph