Small Talk
We all do it now and then. Women may be better at it than men (I had a neighbor once who boasted that she could carry on a conversation with a brick wall), but plenty of men become adept enough through necessity and practice.
Small talk. What’s the point?
Actually, I can think of several points. But first, let’s see what small talk is, as opposed to… big talk?
Small talk is something that people engage in, either if they don’t know each other very well, or if the context is not appropriate for the realer, “bigger” kind of talk. When two individuals find themselves in the same place at the same time, such as in a waiting room, maintaining a dead silence may feel impolite. And so, instinctively, they reach for their arsenal of trivial observations.
The weather may be one of them. (“Hot enough for ya?” “Think we’ll get any snow?”) The chosen topic will be both innocuous and impersonal. That’s because, being strangers, our two individuals do not know which, if any, points or views they share in common. Having no idea whether taking things further would be enjoyable, alienating, or merely stultifying, they prudently keep things to a minimum. Even if they wanted to, such a semi-public area is neither conducive nor appropriate for a heart-to-heart talk. So, they stick to the small stuff.
If common points do become obvious, as when, for example, they are both accompanied by a baby or small children, the talk might turn, lightly, to the subject of child rearing. Alternatively, the conversation may touch on whatever is happening around them. The talk remains “small,” meaning either the subject matter is trivial or that they choose to discuss no more than skim the surface of a “big” topic.
Each of those two strangers may actually have a great deal to say on a particular subject. But they are not prepared to say it to one another. However large the subject matter may loom in their minds and hearts, they feed each other only tiny bits and pieces, snippets of conversation that don’t say much.
“Your niece goes to that school? My daughter also went there for a year.” You make no mention of how horrific that year was, or how your daughter is still licking her wounds. This is only small talk, remember? The big stuff stays hidden away.
In a context, then, where two people are not only strangers but expect to remain so, small talk is no more or less than the oil that greases the wheels of superficial social encounters. It is more courteous for a pair of strangers meeting up in the same place to exchange casual observations than to simply ignore one another… so they chat. It’s like the ball or marbles that kids use when playing in the park with other kids whom they don’t really know. The plaything is nothing more than a symbol of their temporarily shared circumstances. Something small.
But what about a context in which two people are not strangers to one another? There’s nothing more heartbreaking than two people who ought to be close, who may in fact be locked into the closest of relationships, but who regularly engage with one another on the “small talk” level and no farther. What we might call “marriage lite.”
I’m talking about the guy who grits his teeth and bares his soul just long enough to win a wife, and then retreats into the space that’s most comfortable for him: his own. Or the woman, uneasy in the world of emotion, goes about her marriage on a strictly practical basis.
Discussing things such as errands, carpools and the like may be necessary for a married couple. But relating only on that level is a tragedy.
Little Doors
Let’s get back to our two strangers in a waiting room. There are reasons why their desultory small talk could evolve into something more. Something bigger.
The first reason is a phenomenon many of us may have experienced at one time or another. It’s what can happen when travelers spend time together on a journey with a defined beginning and end. Or people who find themselves spending time side by side in a crowded room where neither knows another soul. Or any situation in which you’re talking to someone you don’t know at all, and find yourself enjoying it.
Thrown together by circumstance, one can be encouraged by a listening ear, an empathetic smile, to open up. Out pour confidences which we’ve rarely revealed even to others much closer to us. Into ears that will soon vanish from our lives, we sometimes venture to share our most personal stories. This offers the relief of unburdening ourselves without the awkwardness of having to deal with the repository of our confidences afterward. A sympathetic stranger can feel like a safe place in which to deposit our angst for a while.
Sometimes, of course, the stranger is not fated to remain so. Suppose, as the pair engage in their small talk, they begin to have reason to believe that this unplanned meeting could lead to something more. Something realer and richer. Suppose, upon discovering that they’re both new in the neighborhood and that they live an easy distance from one another, they begin to sense possibilities?
In such a case, small can easily turn into big.
The same topics that were first deployed in the name of politeness or merely as a time filler, are available now to be mined to greater depths. Not necessarily in that semi-public area, of course. The mining may have to wait for a more fitting time and place. But tiny nuggets of gold may be discerned even in that initial round of small talk, twinkling in the soil of the otherwise trivial remarks and holding out a promise of riches to come.
Viewed in this light, small talk can sometimes be a small door. Instead of a stream of nothings leading to nothing, our initial superficial remarks can follow a different track. One in which small observations lead to big ones. When the doors open, matters of little importance can find themselves giving way to the important stuff.
Even if we didn’t realize it at the start, when we began that idle conversation with the person next to us for courtesy’s sake, we were actually throwing open a portal into… who knows what? Maybe something magnificent. Possibly something more beautiful than we could ever have imagined.
I think that, deep down, we’re always attuned to the possibilities. Even as we engage in the most lightweight of small talk, there’s a part of us that’s standing on tiptoe, peering out at the possibilities. That’s the part that never gives up hope of connecting with someone new. The part that believes it’s never too late to make another friend.
So the next time you find yourself chatting casually with a stranger, you may want to keep your eyes peeled. For a glint of gold nestled in the soil. Or a tiny door, opening into an unexpected future.
