All I Know About Small Talk

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Hello Reader,

Got small talk?

You probably know someone who doesn’t do small talk—or can’t. As the Buddhist might say, “When the student is ready, the lesson will appear.” At least, that’s how it worked for me. I remember walking into my college counsellor’s office and saying,“Hey! I just figured out what small talk is about!” She asked what I thought small talk was; I described what I now believed, with my new level of consciousness; she said, “I think you just made a developmental leap in your communication skills.”

It’s nice to have learned and grown. Alain de Botton has a perspective on growth, saying something like, (in my own words): “If you are not embarrassed by who you were last year, then you are not learning fast enough.”  

This advice probably serves Alain’s agenda of getting his ego out of the way. In other words: It’s OK to grow, to have grown, and to once have not-yet grown. I have no ego problems saying I once “didn’t get” small talk. I would hope to have sympathy for all the previous versions of myself, and sympathy for others who still don’t get it. Such as the lady in a bar recently. She heard my above story and leaned forward, “OK! So tell me—what’s small talk?”

Trouble is, in the bar I could only think to say, “Consideration for others.” Besides, we were in a small group, and conversation flowed on. Sometimes it takes an essay to collect my thoughts... An old thought-tool runs, “If a goal (small talk) is true and good and beautiful, and if it is not being reached, then there are obstacles in the way.” I’ve already written of obstacles such as impatience, and quoted the impatient-with-small talk Oprah Winfrey, in my essay Tick Tock As We Talk archived February 2018. Here’s a thought: If I meet you on a stormy day, and we need shelter, then we’ll both be too impatient for small talk. No doubt rocket scientists are… maybe not impatient, but… eager to talk of intellectual things. Yet… what of Albert Einstein?

Albert was a kindly man. When walking in public, in the city, when he came upon high school students struggling with their homework in the park, he would help them with their algebra. I have no doubt that, with fellow adults, he would gently engage in small talk, out of consideration for them. Fact is, many people feel safer with small talk. It’s a grown up version of the ordinary high school kids who, if on a nervous date, will choose going to a movie so they won’t have to talk as much. Of course adult life isn’t as hard as a date, but the principle is the same.

In high school, some of us would try to be cool, while actually being like a duck: Looking serene on the surface, paddling like mad underneath. As adults, many prefer to start out with small talk while crossing the pond of time swimming alongside you, talking surface things, while occasionally dipping  below the water for more sustaining food, then back up again, sailing onward, staying mainly on the surface.

A friend my age has been having house parties for decades, in a house too small to dance in, yet I remember when she would have the music at dance hall levels: Partly to save folks the burden of talking, I suppose. Now more self confident, her parties have a music level one can easily talk through—and no, it's not because our ears are old and tired!

I’m sure people like to feel safe from a “time factor.” For smoking a cigarette, they know they can count on your presence for seven minutes, for a coffee they have your attention for fifteen, and, having such an implied commitment of time, they would feel safer to talk a bit more seriously. For most people, I think, small talk is their safe default mode, either for testing the water, or even for all day, sometimes: Better to be bored than sorry. I have a few friends who I plunge right into the water with, but those folks are braver, more intimate with me, and more engaged in life. 

If I met Einstein, I know he would not be a snob. Smart, but no snob. He would know: Small talk allows for a nice exchange of “units of recognition,” what the self-help books of the 1970’s called “strokes.” I can feel “validated” and “seen” when someone enquires ‘how are you?’ or says, ‘I hope you are fine,’ or ‘nice to see you looking well,’ and ‘hey, you’ve lost weight!’ Even the small act of ‘how’s the weather?’ or ‘how ‘bout that team?’ reassures me I am somewhat worth talking to. This I need to know, as an earlier version of me would have days when I walked back alleys, feeling a hushed silence, to avoid people: Call them my extremely ‘bad hair’ days.’ On my good days, thinking of others not myself, I am conscious of how my small talk helps others.

College again: I was role modelling from an older man how to be touchy. And I was getting better at it, for both men and women. One day I walked down the corridor with my arm across a young woman’s shoulders. To me, having low self-esteem that particular day, my arm felt like a stupid dry stick. But of course it didn’t feel that way to my classmate. She didn't know I was having a low day. I don’t suppose we can ever know how some individuals, on some days, crave our small talk, appreciate our effort to see them. That dry stick was probably on a day before I understood small talk. But I do now. Today I help people all I can, with small talk, deep talk, and conversation talk.

Sean Crawford

March

Calgary

2018