Small Talk

I have an aversion to small talk.

First of all, I am terrible at it.

Me: Hi, how are you?

People: Good, how are you?

Me: Good.

...then crickets.

Because when I ask how you are, I mean it.

I want to know how you are.

And when we do the "good" thing back and forth, I deflate.

I don't know where to go from there. My mind empties and I have no words left.

I have always thought small talk was the price you pay before getting to the good stuff.

What I am starting to realize is that small talk might actually be part of the good stuff too.

Years ago, I went to a baby shower.

A baby shower where I didn't really know anyone.

Which is my introverted side's version of being dropped into the wilderness with no supplies.

So I did what any socially awkward person would do.

I stood in the corner and observed.

The women talked about laundry detergent.

The men talked about sports and beer.

Everyone talked about the food.

And I know that in a group of people who do not have deep relationships, small talk is what happens.

And if I am being fair, I have a current obsession with my laundry beads myself, so I am not exactly above talking about laundry detergent.

But small talk exhausts me.

Deep conversation lights me up.

I want to know what keeps you awake at night.

What you're afraid of.

What you're excited about.

What you're grieving.

What you're hoping for.

Tell me about the thing you can't stop thinking about.

Tell me about the thing you don't tell anyone else.

Tell me something real.

And yet...

If you ask me how I am, I will most likely say, "Good."

Because I often do not think people actually want to hear how I am.

Even though I desperately want to hear how they are.

I am very much part of the larger problem where we hide our less true selves in exchange for being more tolerable.

And respectfully...

Eff that.

We joke at work all the time that we're thankful there is no HR department listening to our conversations.

This is not technically true.

We have HR.

I am half of it.

What we really mean is this:

We keep it very real with one another.

We say things you probably should keep to yourself.

We express emotions that may not be celebrated in a corporate environment.

We laugh.

We vent.

We process.

We show up as ourselves.

And because of that, some of my coworkers have become some of my closest friends.

We have formed something rare in a workplace.

Trust.

But the trust didn't magically appear one day.

It was built through thousands of ordinary conversations.

Shared frustrations.

Inside jokes.

Random observations.

Daily check-ins.

Stories about our weekends.

And yes, probably discussions about laundry detergent.

The children I work with are as real as it gets too.

Children cannot help but be real.

They know no other way.

The world has not convinced them to shrink yet.

And because they haven't learned to shrink, they don't ask us to shrink either.

They tell you exactly what they think.

Exactly what they feel.

Exactly what they want.

And there is something beautiful about that.

So I struggle even more when I leave my workplace and return to the world of "I'm good, how are you?"

I participate in it just like everyone else.

Every Tom, Dick, and Harry I encounter.

"I'm good."

"Doing well."

"Can't complain."

The usual script.

A friend recently pointed something out to me.

She felt like she was doing all of the reaching out.

She was sending me the random thoughts.

The funny pictures.

The TV show recommendations.

The things that made her think of me.

I always responded.

I engaged.

I just didn't initiate.

Because the truth is, I don't think to.

Or maybe more accurately, I think to and then talk myself out of it.

I will spend an embarrassing amount of time thinking about texting someone and then decide not to because what I have to say doesn't feel important enough.

I assume they won't care.

I have spent years treating anything that wasn't important as small talk.

A random text.

A funny picture.

A recommendation.

An observation about my day.

A thought that doesn't change the world.

If it wasn't meaningful, I assumed nobody cared.

But what I am realizing now is that meaningful relationships are often built on hundreds of seemingly meaningless moments.

Small talk is not the opposite of connection.

It is often the beginning of it.

It is how we learn whether someone is safe.

Whether they listen.

Whether they make room for us.

Whether they can hold joy and disappointment and everything in between.

The deep conversations I love so much rarely appear out of nowhere.

They are usually built on a foundation of ordinary interactions that slowly teach us we can trust one another.

So while I still want to be the person who holds the real stories of the people in my life—and maybe even the stranger standing next to me—I am learning that trust is rarely granted all at once.

It is earned.

Conversation by conversation.

Text by text.

Laundry detergent recommendation by laundry detergent recommendation.

So if talking about laundry beads is part of the process, then I guess I will happily tell everyone about my favorite kind.

It's Downy Unstopables Unlimited Collection In-Wash Laundry Scent Booster Beads, No. 26, by the way.

It'll have you looking for reasons to do more laundry.

True story.