I found this excerpt from a Medium article that I sadly can’t find for some reason. I often save excerpts like this that I find fascinating and then build a blog post around them.
It helps to have some piece of writing to go off of as if someone provided some insightful bit in a conversation. The author ends this excerpt just as my thoughts begin this post:
“I particularly enjoy reading works of non-fiction, but any form of good literature is utterly captivating. Keep in mind that whenever you pick up a good book to read, you are taking an extensive journey into the mind of the author. It’s amazing to me that as an ordinary person, I have immediate access to the greatest minds of the past and present, and can absorb years and years of their toiling research in just a matter of days or weeks. This ability to be captivated by the minds of others is also widely available in the form of our loved ones and friends. However, it’s the people closest to us that we often take for granted. We tend to think we know everything there is to know about them, and our inquisitive nature is often reserved for strangers and small talk.”
What comes to mind when you hear those words?
Is small talk a set of pleasant or unpleasant words?
To me, small talk can be a beautiful, synergistic, and very much so human way of connecting with others (known and unknown).
I love the result so much that I have inadvertently been practicing the art of small talk since high school. The result is a new connection, a person in a place to visit halfway around the world, or the news that my mother was a badass in the field of speech pathology.
I can see, however, how many people perceive small talk as a waste of time, and learned much from such people in my very first mini backpacking trip to Boston, New York, and Chicago in January of 2018 (yes it was freezing as shit and yes I absolutely loved it).
What I learned from these people during that frigid winter, more so in their aversion to my small talk and body language, was that time is a valuable commodity, and most small talk is a waste of that valuable commodity.
What I learned was that these northern folk weren’t necessarily mean, they were just being cautious with their time (and they were overwhelmed by so many people trying to talk to them all the time).
Humans are not supposed to live like this, surrounded by masses of other humans, in tight spaces, in busy lives, in mindless routines (but that’s for another post).
I say, “what I learned” because my time trying so hard to create small talk and learn everything about everyone was a waste of others’ time.
I learned the opposite of this, the art of small talk, living in Nashville, Tennessee (it sounds better when you add the state). Nashville, one could argue, is the birthplace of small talk. I mean, there is so much small talk that the word got out and became the main reason so many people visit.
Did you enjoy Nashville? Hell yeah, the people there are so friendly. I met so many awesome folks. Hattie B’s is a godsend. The best bands play in East Nash. LA Jackson used to have the best view of downtown. I digress.
It’s almost a crime not to engage in small talk on the streets of Demonbruen or Gallatin Avenue, in Honky Tonks or Printer’s Alley. It was a place I thrived.
Nadiia Mykhalevych describes small talk beautifully:
“Small talk is not a small thing. It’s like a gateway to the conversation. You just need to knock on this door, wait for the response of the other person, and see whether they’ll invite you in or not.”
There was a flipside though. A lot of that small talk, as I learned in Central Park and along the Freedom Trail, was a waste of valuable time. Meaningful conversations come from astute observations.
When observing the Northern attitude, I was taught to find a reason to engage in small talk, not fumble for the reason during small talk. Akin to a quarterback throwing a deliberate pass to one desperately chucking the ball somewhere upfield.
Small talk is also a strange human mechanism I find myself in all the time. An awkward silence that needs a filling: “Hows it going?”, “The weather is nice today isn’t it?”, “What is your greatest fear and why?”
That last one was an obvious outlier. A question I think everyone should ask everyone all the time (and not in the job interview way).
What is my greatest fear and why? Well, for starters, it’s not physical, not something that can kill me, and not a feeling per se.
What I fear the most is having lived a life that I would regret, and so far that is not the case. So far I’ve lived at least three lives that I can say with confidence are pretty damn good lives.
But as the human mind does its human thinking, I create this fear that I will die without having fufilled my dreams:
Writing a book that touches many, many people, acting in a movie that inspires many, many people, and creating an album that helps many, many people find inner peace.
These are not just dreams cultivated from fear, they are aspirations brought to me over time (but that’s for another post).
Maybe you consider small talk a waste of time, or maybe you consider it the best waste of time, but either way, we can use mindfulness to approach small talk constructively.
Strong relationships are the product of the right questions, and we can find out that the right questions are openings to someone else’s world, a portal through which we can learn, grow, and strengthen ourselves.
What we learn can then be conveyed to others, down the road, during a different, small, talk.