In Defense of Small Talk

Part of being a lightworker, to me, is interacting with people in a positive and uplifting way. One of the small ways this can be accomplished is through small talk. Small talk does matter to people and can make them feel happy and important.

My women’s spirituality circle has recently undergone some changes, including the addition of new candidates for membership. For me, group mind is of supreme importance and so I spend quite a bit of time observing how the candidates interact with each other. There is one eye kept open for possible problems, another that looks to see who would work well together on projects, and both eyes on how the group runs when all of us are together and the strengths of the various members.

Many of these candidates are not just new to us, but new to each other. So much of what goes on in a circle like ours is of an intensely personal nature – this is a spirituality that is based in large part on personal growth – so having a circle of people that like each other and trust each other is pretty high on the priority list. You can still have rituals, healing, and energy exchances with people who are lukewarm with each other, but they are rarely transcendent experiences.

To that end, small talk bridges much of the gaps that people have when first meeting. Everyone is nervous. Everyone wants to be liked. Our group has a 90 day candidate period where we make sure that the person in question is the right fit for the group and vice versa, so everyone is on “good” behavior, or at least displaying some degree of company manners. However, we do have to get to know one another and become more familiar with each other. In comes small talk.

One recent meeting, the small talk centered around lentils and other beans. On the surface talking about eating lentils, and the preference of red lentils, and the various ways you can cook lentils (lentil loaf!) may seem more than a little dry or tedious, but it wasn’t. The lentil discussion gave four different people common ground with each other. Four people who don’t really know each other. Also, the conversation of lentils came out of a more serious issue of how to stretch a dollar in these times of major economic meltdown – a meltdown many of us feel very keenly as we try to make do with less. This lentil conversation showed how many people in our group had the scary experience of trying to feed many people with very little money and how beans and rice often came riding to the rescue in these situations. These women will understand if a member of our group loses their job, because they have been there before and had to survive that hardship. This is good to know.

However, even talk of the weather yields common ground. I like to know who gets cold easily so I can remind them to wear a sweater to my house – I like it cold. I also want to know who really enjoys summer. Talk of weather often leads to talk of who has lived in a different climate, what that climate was like, and the energy of the place. All good information to have.

Also, weather is an important part of our lives. The rain often makes basements in this area flood, or provides a good way to obtain water for ritual. Snow prevents travel, or induces snowball fights or sledding. Much of our life is dictated by weather from what we wear to how we travel to what our leisure activities will be that week. There is a reason that the Weather Channel is so popular. Often, talk of the weather can lead to much more intense conversations of relocation or family or major spiritual revelations. In order to get to the more intense part of the conversation, you have to open the door.

Small talk opens the door of communication. When someone says, “Is it hot enough for you?” you have the choice of mocking this as cliché, or of trying to understand why it is a cliché. It may be that the person asking the question is just metaphorically knocking on your door.

One of my best friends and I communicate a lot via email, but even when she lived in the area, we would have detailed conversations about the order we were going to pay our bills in. Neither of us were bored with these conversations, because they were important to us. To an outsider, we probably looked like we were just sitting around spouting numbers to each other, but to us, we were talking about our lives. In detail. Because the details are what we obsessed over, so having someone who cares about the details is great. When someone knows your details, they often know what you are thinking and how you will react in various situations.

Much of our lives are minutiae. Updating my status on Facebook, and reading the status updates of others, has shown me that life is often comprised of paying the bills, doing the laundry, making dinner, and vacuuming before company arrives. Considering the amount of time we spend on these mundane activities, it makes sense that we would want to talk about them. Also, in the atmosphere of a spiritual circle, I would like to know what person hates vacuuming but is pretty happy to wash dishes. When cleanup time arrives, you really don’t want to make it worse by asking people to do jobs they dread the most.

Growing up, we used to joke that my mother could find out someone’s life story in a matter of a few minutes. I would watch her sit in a waiting room and either strike up a conversation with someone seated next to her, or watch her respond favorably to someone asking her a mundane, small talk question. After 10 minutes, my mother would know how hard it was when that person’s parent died, where they worked, the names of every member of their family, what type of humor would make them laugh, and much, much more. Somewhere in her head is an endless filing cabinet of people who live in her large community and there are few people she doesn’t know. It makes her home more of a home to her to know about everyone in the community. It also makes her well liked.

It makes going shopping with her a nightmare because she is stopped constantly, but, hey, I’m kind of anti-social when shopping as it isn't my favorite thing in the world.

Small talk can be very boring, but in a lot of ways it works as the glue for holding a community together. With spiritual circles being fairly small communities, but communities nonetheless, small talk greases the wheels of communication and helps people ease into being comfortable with one another. Small talk is an ice breaker that most people are familiar with and one that they can understand. It is a social ritual that exists for a purpose, even if we often don’t think too much about that purpose. In a world where much of human interaction is online and brief, small talk serves to find commonality, break the ice, and helps people learn more about each other in a pressure free manner.

I also think that small talk is how we test the waters with each other. If you care enough to listen to me talk about how that one red sock had me wearing pink underwear for a few years, chances are you will care enough about the larger issues in my life. If you can be trusted to listen to me talk about eating beans and rice for three months with empathy and respect, chances are you can be trusted to listen to me talk about my hopes and fears. Small talk allows us, in the early stages of building a rapport, to test the waters with each other.

To end with the mundane, it is really late and I am tired so I am off to bed – it rained outside and the change in pressure has induced a bit of a headache. Is it wet enough outside for you?