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response? They just catch a word, and they jump in and start talking. It seems to be related, because they have caught a word from your talk. But they are not responding to you; they have been preparing what they are saying without hearing you.
I have heard ... An old man is sitting in a railway compartment and a young man in front of him asks, "Can I know the time?" The old man has a watch, but the old man thinks for a while. The young man thinks, "It is strange, I have just asked about the time -- what is he thinking? Perhaps he is deaf, he is old." So he shouts loudly, "I want to know, what is the time?"
The old man said, "Listen, young man, I am not deaf. I have heard that you want to know what the time is, but I was thinking whether to tell you the time or not, because life is such a puzzling affair, and I am so experienced."
The young man said, "This is such a simple question. You have a watch, you can just tell me the time; there is no problem, no puzzle, nothing."
He said, "You don't understand. Once I tell you the time, one thing leads to another. I will ask you, `Where are you going?' And you will say, `The next station,' and I will say, `That's strange, I am also going there. In fact I live there, so why don't you come and have a cup of coffee with us?' But I have a young girl, very beautiful, and it is absolutely certain that you will fall in love with each other. And I don't want my daughter to be married to a man who does not have even a wristwatch. So I was thinking, `Now this young man is trying to create a trouble for me.'"
Life is certainly puzzling.
And these people are conversing with each other!
Two professors were in the same madhouse, and the superintendent wanted to know what would happen if they were both put in the same cell. Both were great intellectuals, well-known writers.
So he puts them both in one cell, and he has a small window from where he can watch but they cannot see him. And they immediately get into a very involved conversation. He is puzzled because one is talking about the earth and the other is talking about the sky, and the conversation is going perfectly well; there
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