Small Talk

As any of you who have met me in person can attest, I’m not a huge fan of talking about things I consider unimportant.

First, let us define “small talk”. For me, small talk is conversation involving events in our daily lives or the status of something everyone should be able to relate to. To be more clear, it’s a conversation concerning what happened to you that day. For example, if someone asks how you did on a test or what happened over the weekend. Or, it can concern something everyone can relate to. Like how the weather is, or how their job is going, or their health, etc. But small talk avoids any controversial issues. If you are talking about politics, it is no longer small talk. Also, when talking about daily life, small talk doesn’t allow for opinions or analysis. If you start to give advice or discuss what could happen, it is no longer small talk.

So why do people talk about subjects like the weather or how their mutual health is? Do they genuinely enjoy talking about such subjects? If so, then I’m afraid I cannot share the sentiment. Maybe I have a short attention span, but subjects about daily life bore me if they are continued for more than five minutes or so.

Or, are they simply used as an ice breaker, to start the arduous process of communication with an intelligent being? This seems more likely to me. But if so, what does it mean if a conversation doesn’t progress past small talk within a certain time? Does it mean that you cannot hold a real conversation with that person? If so, then that is a sad statement in and of itself.

If it means you cannot hold a conversation, then that means that all those people you hear simply making small talk for a continuous period of time are actually unable to talk to each other on any intellectual or emotional level. But this seems contrary to what is seen, since I regularly run across best friends who are making small talk.

This means that small talk doesn’t have any correlation to the ability to hold an actual conversation, after all. Then what purpose does it serve, exactly? Maybe as a transition, and people just aren’t comfortable opening a conversation with immediate intimacy.

Small talk is the start of a conversation, but doesn’t necesarily have to progress to anything deeper. In fact, among your deepest friends, you can feel the most connection when you’re talking about the most trivial things imaginable.

In actuality, small talk is actually a pretty good indication of how comfortable you are with someone. If you feel the need to progress to something deeper in conversation, then you just aren’t comfortable enough with a person to KNOW that you could progress to something deeper, but don’t have to. If you’re comfortable with someone. then you can talk about anything, everything, and nothing. Or if you’ve reached a level of true comfort with another, then you can simply sit in silence and know that there is no one that knows you better.

So if you feel like all of your conversations seem to be about nothing, remember that its because that’s all they have to be about.

-Chris