I was told growing up that there are three subjects you never talk about if you want to keep company: money, politics and religion. Don’t ask anyone how much they make, never say who you voted for and definitely don’t argue with someone about their idea of God.

These rules make sense.

But I’ve always found myself aching to talk about exactly those things — the trivial and the philosophical — because as I see it, they are unavoidable and intrinsically intertwined.

One moment I’m recounting a messy night out with my friends— the boys, the music, the kind of house remix that makes you question humanity — and the next, we’re talking about what music means, what it makes us feel and how that feeling becomes a kind of divinity.

And suddenly, there you are the morning after in smudged mascara, somehow talking about God. Then, just as suddenly, God turns right back into a teenage girl in plaid pajama pants, asking if you saw her situationship at the bar.

At Northwestern, there’s no shortage of academic discourse. But outside op-eds and lecture halls, there are quieter conversations unfolding all over campus as we navigate our humanity — how we feel about politics, power, society and the ways in which those things connect back to us.

I’m a person who relies heavily on hypotheticals. At 2 a.m. in my dorm room, I’d turn to my roommate and ask what she’d do if she got pregnant; what color she sees when she imagines her future; what kind of couch she’d want in her dream apartment. We’d bounce questions back and forth for hours, until the sun peeked in through the blinds.

After moving to a new city this summer — not just any city, but the one and only New York City — I noticed the absence of those conversations and missed them almost as much as I miss the people themselves. It made me wonder: Why do we rely so much on talking things through? What’s the actual importance of conversation?

In New York, a friend came to visit me as I took on my first “big girl” internship. On the 11-minute walk to the laundromat, my duffle slung messily over my shoulder, we started talking — about religion, politics and what it means to be a person in the world right now.

As we spoke and listened — through the streets of Brooklyn on the 2 Train to Times Square and all through Bryant Park — we eventually landed on The New York Times’ famous “36 Questions That Lead to Love” as a talking point.

I asked her what makes a good friend.

“Conversation,” she said.

The ability to speak freely about anything, from which campus couples probably broke up to whether people are inherently good. She made the point that the conversations usually left off the record are the most raw, honest and important to have.

I thought about it, and I’ve landed somewhere similar. We navigate life by thinking out loud with people we love. I have a mountain of opinions on my own — trust me, I do — but they’re nothing compared to the quiet mysteries that get solved in whispers in a dorm room or cross-legged on North Beach.

Opinions are less often changed by exposé-style news stories or publicized debates than when two people take the time, through conversation, to navigate the other’s view and dissect their own in the process.

This column is a space to highlight the discoveries found in connection, whether that be about that guy we aren’t sure if we like, or what it means to be entering a world we aren’t sure we know.

Have you ever wondered if life really gets worse after graduation? Rehashed old drama with friends who still remember?

Have you ever questioned whether you feel love correctly, whether God is found in sensation or how to best balance passion and financial sustainability? Do you find yourself speaking out loud and as the words begin to take shape, slowly changing your mind?

I’m fairly confident I don’t know much of anything at all, but if you also find yourself aching to talk about the things that feel trivial and the things that feel untouchable at the same time, stay a while and chat. I have a feeling we have a lot to talk about — off the record, of course.

Gabriela Hamburger Medailleu is a Medill junior and author of “Off the Record.” She can be contacted at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected]. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.