Small, Medium, Large Talks

Intro

"Speech is silver, but silence is golden"

As a self acclaimed introvert, I absolutely lived by that quote. In a lot of situations, I thought that it was wise to stay silent. Or perhaps I was just using it as an excuse. "It's not that I don't have anything to say, I chose not to say anything!" Of course, I would also have long conversations where I do talk, usually in something that I would call deep talks. I saw it as the only form of talks that are worth having. In deep talks, I learn about something new, or I deepen my relationships with someone, or I am able to share my important thoughts and feelings to other people.

On the other side, I loathed small talk, which I define as talks that have little substance with typically unimportant subjects. Small talk is usually done for the sake of politeness or even to avoid awkwardness. A classic example is talking about the weather. I hated when people talked about the weather. It is obvious that there is nothing else to talk about because weather is a generic topic that everyone experience and therefore guaranteed to be relatable.

However, in the recent years, I realised that small talk can be pleasant. It can even be a necessary step to have the deep talks that I liked. Similar to the idea of using small habits to reach your end result, deep talks can only happen if there are many shallow talks that precede it.

So, with this shift of my view on conversations, I want to explore the evolution of my views, the social skills that I observed and learned, and why small talks are steps to having deeper talks.

Hating small talk

Growing up, I didn’t see the point of small talk. I felt like it’s fairly obvious when someone is making small talk without substance, and I don’t really understand why people need to engage in them. I understand starting a conversation with "how are you" as a starting point to a substantial talk. But I could not understand just talking about the weather with no follow-up conversation.

A large part of why I dislike small talk is because I have self-diagnosed social anxiety. I am filled with anxious thoughts when I talk to somebody without an established social connection, i.e. talking to strangers. For example, asking a worker at a grocery store for the location of milk. I would rather find the milk myself. It would be even more anxiety inducing if on top of that the social context is not the norm. For example, asking a worker at a grocery store to recommend me a recipe for my dinner tonight.

I feel more anxious when I speak one on one compared to speaking in a group. I find that speaking in a group is easier because it’s usually more of a one way communication, like giving a speech. In speeches, I would have everything that I want to say rehearsed and under my control. I don’t need to respond to someone else’s input.

So, for me, speaking to someone can be quite stressful which made small talk seem like a waste of energy. If the social social context allows it, I’m more comfortable with silence rather than unnecessary small talk.

Small to Medium talk

As I learned to handle my social anxiety better, I got better at answering small talk questions. Answering "how was your weekend?" got easier the more I did it. It also helped to actively listen to other people's answers to get an understanding on suitable answers for common small talk questions. Conveniently, actively listening also allowed me to be more engaged in conversations, since I can ask more follow up questions or chime-in on relatable points. That led to small talks that felt more substantial, perhaps growing to "medium talks".

For me, medium talks are talks that go beyond talking about a shared state that affects all parties and instead talk about something that only concerns one party but can be indirectly relevant or of interests to the other parties. For example, the weather condition is something that people share, if it’s raining, it rains for everyone. But, perhaps only one person bike to work which is inconvenienced by the rain, while the other person is close by so they just walked with an umbrella. In this scenario, a small talk about the rain can turn into a medium talk about how each person feel about the rain today and how that made their morning commute different. No matter how trivial it may seem, that is the sort of conversation that allows both sides to know more about each other, which can lead to deeper conversations in the future.

Deep talks start with shallow ones

The title of this section has two meanings. First, shallow conversations might lead to deep conversations start at that moment. Second, having multiple shallow conversations over time opens up the possibility of having deeper ones in the future.

The first meaning is on the micro level. We don’t often start a conversation with a deep discussion. There is a little “how do you do” before people can dive into deep talks. This doesn’t only refer to light questions like “how’s work” or “how was your weekend”, it can also might be questions that is not deep yet but might lead there, for example “what have you been seeing in the news lately”.

The second meaning is on the macro level. Making small talks can be a way to improve your relationship with someone up to a point where it is comfortable to have deeper talks. The small talks not only lay foundation of the relationship, but also give each other practice on how the other person likes to speak. I like to draw a parallel with knowing classmates at school. At the beginning, it is often a bit awkward to talk to each other. However, since I would be “stuck” with the same classmates for the school year, I am “forced” to talk to them everyday. Perhaps just about school work or other mundane things at first. But it would get to a point where it’s more comfortable to talk about deeper topics. As adults, it’s harder to build that relationship without being conscious about it. There is no social structure like a school where we are “forcibly” set up to constantly interact with each other. So, we need to make conscious effort to warm up to others via small conversations.

Both meanings show the importance of small talk to achieve deeper connections. Having small talks is the grinding that we need to do to nurture relationships. Some relationships are harder to grind than others, some are more worth it than others. I feel like some people are more natural at the grind, I certainly don’t feel like I am, so I need to put more conscious effort into it. However, like other things, it gets easier and better the more we do it.

Outro

Small talk was something that I despised, thinking that it was a waste of time. That thought was probably why I was terrible at it which fed into the hatred, creating a vicious cycle. As I grow as a person, I realised that small talk is actually a necessary avenue to deepen my relationship with people and have the deep talks that I liked. Just like how conversations has a build-up, relationship has a build-up too.

On that note, if this post was interesting to you, reach out to me on any social media platform and let’s have some small talks!