Deep conversations a way to happiness?

I recently read an article in the NY times about a new research that claims that people who have deeper conversations about things tend to be more happy than people who just engage in small talk. The research, conducted at University of Arizona, found that people who talked about stuff like current affairs, philosophy and religion seemed to be far happier than people who talked about weather, a t.v show or other random stuff.

I couldn't agree more. Deep and meaningful conversations definitely help you to enrich yourself both intellectually as well as emotionally...they help you to think analytically and question, which is something that small talk does not offer. So while just telling someone about a TV show or a movie may not be meaningful, analyzing it critically may help you realize something more than just whether you liked it or not.

However, as most people pointed out about this article, its very hard to engage in a meaningful conversation with people around us...with the instant technology like Twitter and Facebook, where the number of characters you can use to say something is limited, a deep conversation is almost impossible. Instead, instant status updates regarding what one is doing, wearing or even smoking have become the norm. Also, I think that you can not have such conversations with everyone...rather its limited to people who share similar interests as you do and also like talking about them. From my own experience, there are not many people who like engaging in such deep discussions, either because they don't have time or they just are not interested.

Personally, deep and meaningful conversations for me, have been very enriching. I have learnt a lot about new and different things, and more importantly learnt to question which I did not do before. They have always made me happy and eager to learn more. Though happiness is subjective and everyone can define it for themselves, if you know or have someone in your life with whom you can have such conversations, it's definitely worth it.