'Big' talk
“Small talk is for small minds” – that’s how I felt all through my teenage years and college. I believed there was something inherently phoney about people who hardly knew each other exchanging pleasantries about topics they didn’t care about just to fill silences. I seriously resented the pressure I felt to babble meaninglessly in social situations, and avoided them wherever I could. At the same time, I struggled to make friends, and was plagued by sensations of loneliness.
The connection between these two things seems pretty obvious in hindsight, but believe it or not, I only figured it out a few years ago. I wouldn’t describe myself as a master of conversation now – but I do feel very strongly that small talk is an underrated and valuable skill, the first building block in the edifice of a new friendship and even of community life as a whole. And fortunately, I have picked up a few skills and tips that I’d like to share with those who, like myself, are “conversationally challenged”.
In fear of words
You wouldn’t think, if you had seen me as a baby, that this was a girl who would ever struggle to talk. According to my mother, I spoke in full sentences by the age of one, although perhaps we should allow for a little exaggeration stemming from motherly love. Still, being socially tongue-tied has very little to do with linguistic ability, and from a relatively early age, I found myself struggling to fall in with the rhythms and patterns of other people’s conversations. I had very different interests from my peers, which was isolating in school; I always felt excluded from the talking going on around me and blamed other people for “not getting me”.
That’s where my aversion to small talk started, but I think there are lots of reasons to struggle with it. Some people are reluctant to talk out of shyness or genuine social anxiety, rather than my “social awkwardness” – I never had any fear of talking, I just never managed to say the right things. Others may have simply gotten out of the habit, or never developed it in the first place, because our digital society offers too many crutches, too many easy ways out. These days, whenever an awkward silence falls, most people, myself included, automatically reach for their phones.
Sour grapes
As many people do, I decided that because I couldn’t do something, it must not be worthwhile to begin with. Because I couldn’t handle small talk, I judged it to be useless; in other words, the problem was not with me, but with other people and the way they interacted. Making conversation just for the sake of it seemed so superficial, a social convention that put people through unnecessary discomfort purely for the sake of appearances. I hated the insincerity of it all, and when forced into positions where I had to make conversation, I tended to either show off or undermine it by being sarcastic. Unsurprisingly, this made people uncomfortable, so they avoided me as much as I avoided them, and a vicious circle was initiated.
Small talk with great love
Two things triggered a change: starting work and encountering Saint Josemaria Escriva. At work in a small office, I was around the same people all day every day, so there was no way to avoid conversation without being so rude as to offend people. Brushing people off in college had never bothered me; sure, maybe I ruffled some feathers, but I saw most of those people for a maximum of six hours a week, for about 26 weeks a year. I didn’t have to live with the consequences of my actions. But at work, I was side by side with the same people for 40 hours a week, and I couldn’t avoid seeing how uncomfortable my lack of interest in talking to them made them.
Around the same time as I started my first job, a friend invited me to come to formation classes based on the spirituality of Saint Josemaria. His teaching focused on sanctifying the world through our work, through our everyday lives. From him, I learned that we have to become saints right here in our very ordinary lives. Suddenly, I began to see that those “meaningless” interactions that I dismissed as empty social performances were part of the fabric of a life created for me by God, and that I had to bring Christ into them too. To paraphrase Mother Teresa, I learned that there are no great conversations, only small conversations held with great love.
Other-focused conversations
Maybe you noticed, as you read about my initial struggles with conversation, that it was all about me, me, me? I blamed other people for not “getting” me, not wanting to hear about me and my interests. Not once did I stop to think that perhaps other people wanted the same attention I craved, that I should be reaching out to people to find out about their hobbies and everyday concerns. Because, as I realised once I started reflecting on my treatment of other people, small talk is not just a performative social convention, it is a way of showing others that they matter, that I care for them.
And yes, small talk does often deal with pretty trivial subjects: “Nice day, isn’t it? What did you do this weekend? Have you been busy today?” But the words, the content, don’t actually matter – the gift I can give in small talk is my time, my attentive listening. And without this initial gift, I can’t give bigger gifts, or receive anything in return. In short, I cannot form any sort of intimate relationship by jumping straight into deep water. I have to respect other people’s space and privacy, by gently wading about in the conversational shallows, until we are naturally drawn out farther.
Learning not to talk
As I said, I have learned some tricks for navigating those awkward interactions with people I don’t know intimately. For example, it helps to think about open-ended questions to ask people when those silences fall. In the case of people I meet frequently, especially coworkers, I find that people are always dropping little clues about the things they would like to talk about – whether it’s the TV shows they watch, the music they listen to or their upcoming life events. I try to make a special note of these things so I can ask about them later. Sometimes, it can even help to write these things down, strange and all as that may seem. It’s worth it when you hit on that topic that makes a person suddenly open up and start chatting, and you realise that you’ve made them feel seen.
Small talk with an actual stranger is far more nerve-wracking, of course, but it doesn’t need to be. I find it helps to remember that most people like when others take an interest in them, and will respond if given an opening to talk. I’ve also learned that in these situations, the first step is to signal openness to conversation through my body language: it’s as simple as smiling and making eye contact. Then, depending on the circumstances, I might ask a few prepared questions, asking the person’s name, how they are, where they live or what they work as. Even in answering these reasonably impersonal questions, the other person will probably start giving clues to what they would like to talk about, and once again, attentive listening is the crucial factor.
As you can see, almost all ‘tricks’ for having good conversations have nothing to do with talking more – I’ve actually had to learn to talk less! (That’s a work in progress…) The real ‘trick’, if you can call it that, is more of an interior disposition of deliberate awareness of the other. Naturally, it’s hard to practice this all the time, especially in a busy workplace, so it helps to reflect on why I’m doing it. I find I need to take time to consider the people around me and all the little ways they show their care for me. That reminds me how much I care about them and how much I want to bring Christ to them, which in turn motivates me to try again, renewing my efforts to be genuinely present when we talk.