Over the weekend I happened upon a provocative conversation with a fellow train commuter that had me pondering about how and where we should share our impassioned beliefs. I boarded the packed train to Sydney and quickly realised my journey coincided with that of many teens on their way to a music festival: neon singlets and Smirnoff swigged from coke bottles was the apparent order of the day. Upon taking my seat beside an older gentleman, the only free seat in the carriage, I began reading my copy of the Weekend Australian. I was only one paragraph into a story detailing the latest strategy for Afghanistan when the man beside me struck up conversation. He spoke at me for the next hour and a half.

He told me he was 79 years old and I soon discovered that he believed in everything that I did not. He was a Christian author and a creationist who laughed at the the mere suggestion that science could trump religion. He went as far as to attribute Hurricane Katrina to New Orleans hosting the annual LGBT Mardi Gras celebration. He asked me if I had witnessed the Superbowl, it was flaunting evil, he said. It was at this point I could not longer hide my offence at his extreme views. I couldn't help but wonder if the man was deliberately attempting to elicit a similarly passionate counter to his views or if he was blindly evangelical. I think it was the latter.

As a general rule, while not compromising my own views, I try to ensure that I am not actively and purposely battering those around me with my own agenda. What's your tactic? Do you get passionate or keep it light? What are your rules of conversational engagement?