The Profundity of "Shooting the Sh*t"
Small talk is actually a path to deeper relationships
Apologies (mostly to my mom) for the slightly profane title, hopefully you enjoy the message ðŸ¤
As a shy kid, I was pretty terrible at having conversations. If someone else drove the discussion, I could hack it, but if I was tasked with coming up with something to contribute to an exchange? I was dead in the water. Around early high school I learned that people – especially talkative types – really enjoy when you allow them unrestricted airtime for their rants; this is probably because their family and friends don't put up with their ceaseless chatter. Despite the fact that I was being used as a dumping ground for the ramblings of my high school's extroverted class, I was happy to be on track to making some friends. I began to realize that, when you listen to people – like, REALLY listen to them – they invariably reveal to you who they truly are. It felt like I had discovered a superpower. I found myself regularly being confided in, even by those who I didn't know well, simply because I left space for people to feel heard. This trend continued in college; I wasn't particularly differentiated in my ability to entertain, but I was all ears which seemed to be enough.
During the year that the pandemic changed all of our lives, I fell into a self help/ spirituality-seeking rabbit hole and became much more self aware as a result. One of the things I noticed about myself was that I rarely reflected on, nor had been taught in any capacity HOW to have a conversation. I figured that, while yes, conversations should feel organic and not formulaic, there are undoubtedly a number of people who have done a lot more thinking about this microcosm of human life than I have. I took it upon myself to do all I could to gain proficiency in the art of conversation through various books and podcasts.
The job I scored during college meant that I'd be making a big move once school was over, so In my final semester of college – in an effort to practice the skills I was learning – I committed to a daily practice of striking up conversations with strangers. This was a harrowing experience, but there is not a single time that it went badly. These encounters were often deep and meaningful for me and my conversation partner, and taught me that, if both parties are willing to give some level of effort, a meaningful exchange can be had between most anyone. I did, however, gain a harmful belief as a result of my countless meaningful chats: unless a conversation was "deep", I came to view them as meaningless. I saw discussions of the weather as the fodder of the naive.
I moved to the bay area last year and put into practice these skills that I had been so intently developing. I quickly gained a great base of friends and am super thankful for the community I've been able to build in less than a year. A realization that I've been having (and in some ways a reversion to my beliefs before all of this analysis on human discourse) is that conversations about the weather or other non-consequential topics can most definitely serve some purpose: human connection.
The advent of the internet and smartphones has made it such that people no longer feel the need to ask others for mundane information; we can gather it ourselves. While it may be more "efficient" to go to ChatGPT with all of your questions, something is lost through our insistence that it is silly to ask a stranger for the time or what the facts of a news story are – its not just about information exchange, it's about the bonds that come from the conversations (even the seemingly shallow ones!)
There is a popular meme that I think gets to the heart of this whole conversation/ connection thing:
When you get over the absurdity of this scenario, there is something about this that is super relatable. There are times when the people we love initiate conversations that it would be so easy to question the utility of. The fictional spouse in this meme doesn't really care if her husband would love her as a worm, (or maybe she does, but let's assume she's in her right mind) what she wants is an excuse to talk to him and some affirmation that he cares about her (even in some alternate universe where they were born as mud-residing invertebrate.)
There was this period of time in the early 2010s during which a common response to being asked a "google-able" question was to send the questioner a url that redirected them to the Google homepage. It was a tongue in cheek gag that essentially poked fun at people who dare ask a real person for factual data when the web has such a wealth of knowledge. To see the utility of questions with such a one dimensional view is so harmful to relationships. What an opportunity, having someone come to you for knowledge! Even if you don't know the answer, it serves as a chance to relay some life experience and water the garden of your relationship. Seemingly small queries hold such potential for deeper connection – something that even Google can't give you.
To denigrate "shallow" conversation topics as "of little utility" would be to say that spending time with someone in silence is an even greater waste of time; if you have ever spent a quiet afternoon with a loved one you know that this is clearly not the case. There is something to be gained from time spent in communion with others, even if the topics you discuss aren't particularly lofty. Recognize that conversations are not just a channel for information exchange, but also a means by which we come to know each other emotionally. Connection is the aim of most conversations, even when the topics seem shallow. I've found that there is a profundity to "shooting the shit".
Thank you for reading :) Here’s another blog I wrote about how much it sucks sometimes to talk about work:
this was so good ty!
I definitely think part of your superpower is how you emit a safe non judgmental aura that allows people to confide in you confidently!