Confessions of a Small-Talk Convert
I’ve been wanting to post this for quite a while now, but never got around to finishing it. Now that I have Jon’s honest account of his attempts to foster community and the frustrations he encounters as the perfect pass (but not a Hail Mary, mind you ), I’ll try to catch it, not bobble it, and run with it like a man with his hair on fire. If nothing else, I hope we’ll end up understanding each other a bit better, with a brick or two removed. It seems to me that despite a few common vacations we don’t really know each other well and perhaps that’s partially because we are on different ends of a number of personality spectra.
I loved Steve Taylor’s songs from the very first. Here, finally, was a man who wrote edgy, provocative, insightful lyrics with a Bible-informed worldview - something I had long thought an oxymoron. He’s the one who put the difficulty of belief into words in his song “Harder to Believe than not to.” I still listen to his music occasionally, as I did the other week on a night drive home out of Zürich, when I was much encouraged to have someone ask me “Are you a principled man” instead of singing of Jesus the Friendly Monarch while I drove along one of the more dubious streets of the city. A long time ago, Steve Taylor wrote a song that stuck with me for quite a while:
Life’s too short for small talk
So don’t be talking trivia now
Excess baggage fills this plane
There’s more than we should ever allowThere’s engines stalling and good men falling
But I ain’t crawling awayI just wanna know
Am I pulling people closer?
I just wanna be pulling them to you
I just wanna stay angry at the evil
I just wanna be hungry for the trueFolks play follow the leader
But who’s the leader gonna obey?
Will his head get big when the toes get tapping?
I just wanna know are they catching what I say?I’m a little too young to introspect
And I surely haven’t paid all my dues
But there’s bear traps lying in those woods
Most of them already been usedI just wanna know
Am I pulling people closer?
I just wanna be pulling them to you
I just wanna stay angry at the evil
I just wanna be hungry for the trueSearch me, Father, and know my heart
Try me and know my mind
And if there be any wicked way in me
Pull me to the rock that is higher than II just wanna know
Am I pulling people closer?
I just wanna be pulling them to you
I just wanna stay angry at the evil
I just wanna be hungry for the true
(Lyrics from Sock Heaven, where you can also find some comments on the song.)
The line that stuck with me most was the aphorism in the first line. Short, crisp, and right up the alley of this teen that preferred heading to the family car with a book instead of chewing the fat at after-church coffee time. Small talk was for the birds. Real Men got to the point, spoke trenchant, concise, necessary truth and insight.
Looking back I see that I only got it half right in several ways (which I suppose exponentially diminishes how right I got it). For one, I might have skipped the small talk, but I also skipped the soul-baring heart-to-heart that was this mainstay of Christian lore but never part of my life. Not talking at all is not a useful substitute for small talk. For another, skipping the small talk and going straight to the marrow isn’t for everyone either.
I think my first conscious hint of that came a while back, when someone I’d met for the first time at a church I was visiting went from introductions straight to asking me what God was doing in my life. I later realized that I didn’t want to answer that question, that I felt violated by it, but I lacked the presence of mind to stop and realize that. Instead, I groped for an answer. It’s not a question I often hear, and perhaps that and my lack of awareness of what God is in fact doing daily in my life was part of why I had a hard time saying anything vaguely coherent.
I could turn it the other way and say that asking a Christian what God is doing in his life is like asking a fish what water is doing in his life. It takes a very alert and aware person to understand what sustains him how. However, that’s dodging what I do think can be a legitimate question.
I say can be because not just anyone can get away with asking it. What God is doing in my life - once I get around to grasping what it is - is likely to be very personal, due to his nature as a personal God. He may be showing me something through failure at work, or through a hard time in marriage, or through the temptations I battle or give in to, and none of the above is something I’d share with someone who just happens to have attended the same church service I did. I don’t think there’s a single person with whom I’d share all of the above - either because it’s not appropriate to share (for instance, some temptations I find wise to keep from Janet) or because I do not trust a person in that area. (Guys, be honest here: how many of you would even admit failure at work to yourself?)
It takes trust to be vulnerable, trust that the other person will have my best interests in mind and be gentle with my soft spots. That means I back off at the first whiff of a judgmental attitude or fixed expectations that won’t allow for my path with God and God’s way of working in me to be unique. That whiff tells me that the surgeon won’t be gentle, and won’t read my medical history or check first if I have pre-existing conditions or am taking Aspirin.
And trust is what, in my opinion, ties back in to small talk. Small talk is what builds a net of common understanding that allows me to know the other person means well, because he has so far. Small talk, in my understanding, is the anesthesia of trust that allows the scalpel of truth to perform surgery without the patient writhing to break free and making a deadly mess of it all.
Of course, too much anesthesia kills the patient, too. Small talk alone kills the soul, or, again in Steve Taylor’s words, “Surface skimmers choke on scum.” I am glad there are people like Jon who see that keenly. We need perceptive diagnosticians.
But along with that, most of us also desperately need skilful anesthesists. Once a patient has emerged from surgery lacerated, bleeding, and in screaming pain, he will never again consent to an operation. For instance, how would you react if someone forced an epidural on you because he was the self-appointed (or perhaps state-appointed) expert? That should make us ask: How much damage have we inflicted because we diagnosed and operated on a patient without his consent and he couldn’t take it without the anesthetic?
So, at long last, I’m allowing myself to talk about college basketball, beauty pageants, Mac versus PC, and yes, the weather.
Just as long as that never becomes all I talk about.
März 24th, 2010 at 00:39
Nicely said and insightful. I’m looking forward to hearing what Jon has to say after reading this. I think it touches on several points that has bothered him about small talk in the past.
März 24th, 2010 at 06:14
Thanks! I’m looking forward to the same. It’s taken me such a long time to make the transition from (at least nominally) despising small talk to finding some value in it that I have no reason to believe I’ve reached the end of wisdom on this topic…
März 24th, 2010 at 18:08
For the most part, I trust everyone I meet, so I’ve had a hard time being convinced by people who have made the case for less trust. Every once in a while I’ve run into someone who isn’t “worthy?” of that trust, and I know better for next time talking with them, but I guess I see it like free range parenting - you could go around asking “what if … “, but generally I find those questions to not be very useful/fruitful when thinking about how to live my life.
And yes, I also allow more small-talk to happen, as I have found that some people need to “chat” for a while before digging into more meaningful areas. I greatly enjoy those conversations that start with people who don’t find that necessary. I generally think about a percentage of conversation, or something, where I am much happier to “chat” with people who we also have significant conversations, and so if the “significant conversation percentage” is high, then I find myself happier with “shallower” conversations.
I’ve heard people counsel others about not sharing everything with his wife, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a situation where that would apply in my own life. A friend said the reason I don’t understand why we need the reform that the new healthcare bill offers is that I’m only thinking about healthcare and insurance by what I’ve experienced in my own life, as well as stories I hear from others. That is probably a fair accusation, and though I’ve tried to enlarge my scope by reading, basically, I think that is how I view all of life - all the experiences I’ve had, plus the experiences I hear about from others. I try to incorporate the stories I hear from others, but it is harder to believe them than my own stories, I guess, and so I suppose they only get half-integrated or something.
As for a forced epidural, I guess I’d rather think about the small-talk as the doctor chatting with you prior to the surgery, rather than as an anesthetic. Anesthetics don’t build trust, they make it so you can’t feel.
I don’t tend to be very good at asking questions or starting conversations (and I haven’t figured out why that is) and so that is probably the primary reason why I don’t ask more pointed questions than I do. One of my favorite questions used to be (I still like it, just don’t use it very often, though it was good a couple times in the Dominican), “so, who is Stephan Stücklin?” (though the question tends to work better if I use their name, rather than yours…) People have all sorts of answers to that, and it often sparks a conversation, based either on their answer, or their method of answering it.
März 24th, 2010 at 19:32
Let’s see if I can write this before Faith wakes up from her nap. (:
I just had a conversation with Jon about this, after he posted and before I read the comment. We thought it would be good for me to write a kind of summary.
First I’ll reply to the actual comment which I just read. I like Stephan’s surgery analogy, but I agree with Jon about changing it slightly to make small talkchatting with the doctor instead of anesthetic.
I also like the “who is…?” question because the person has the freedom to answer that in as light or deep a manner as he wishes. It’s not so direct as “What is God doing in your life?”
In our conversation, I brought up something I’d been thinking of for a while but hadn’t figured out how to say, and that is the verse about casting your pearls before swine. Jon mentioned that other people have said that to him before. He said to me what he wrote above about him trusting everyone first. And I think most of the rest of us have a hard time doing that because we have been wounded when sharing our pearls or treasures with people. I shared that I have felt at times that he has trampled on my pearls, and that cut him to the heart.
I think one thing about it is that he has grown up in an environment where mocking is commonplace and acceptable and “no big deal.” He is much more sensitive to it since he has known me, but he still sometimes mocks and is not even aware that he is doing it. This is a really big deal to people who feel like that is trampling on their treasures and themselves.
It is also related to the “my way is best” syndrome. That even if your way really is best, the other person may not have thought of that way, or has other reasons, based on other experiences, why they do it the way they do. And Jon acknowledges this, but it is hard for him to remember in the moment, I think.
We also talked about how Jon’s disagreements with my mother and sister are partially disagreements with me as well, how some of that pain is related to “pearls” - that we did spend 17 years of my life and 15 of Janet’s under the same roof, living the “same” life with the same experiences. So his not understanding them is also not understanding me.
He is working on understanding that someone is the way she is even if he doesn’t understand why, even if her experience is so foreign to him that he can’t relate to it. Jon has already succeeded at this in the areas of me being an introvert, and in acknowledging that people really can worship God through the Episcopal liturgy (for two examples.)
These were really good things to talk about and I think we have plenty more growing to do. I’m glad these issues are being brought up so that we can work through them.
That’s what I can think of as the summary right now, and Jon can post again when he reads this if he needs to clarify or add. And Faith is still asleep!
März 25th, 2010 at 22:34
Thanks to both of you for your thoughtful replies! It looks like we have ourselves a discussion… There’s so much to reply to that I’ll try to resist the temptation to follow every possible rabbit trail, but if there’s a point I don’t answer that you would have liked me to answer, I’ll be glad to oblige.
If I know an answer worth giving, that is…
Now, where to start… I guess it might be easiest to start by admitting that the epidural example was poorly chosen. I picked it because from what I’ve gathered it’s something most of the women reading the post would strongly object to having forced on them just because someone thinks he’s an expert - I used it as an example of an unwanted medical intervention. That was a bad idea, because of course it is a form of anesthetic, but it is not supposed to stand for small talk or its “anesthetic” or trust-building powers. All it did is confuse. So let’s skip the epidural.
The point I meant to make is that trust (not small talk) is a kind of anesthetic that allows for otherwise painful truth to be more bearable. Jon, you and I take correction from our wives that I submit goes down far better because we know them and trust them. We have so much trust we can take something painful from them, and our confidence in their love for us, respect for us, and willingness to withhold judgment while listening to us (i.e. their unfailing penchant toward giving us the benefit of the doubt if what we say sounds strange to them). I know I can’t have that close a relationship with everyone I come across, but a bit of small talk goes a long way to help me gauge that person’s treatment of me. Does he respect me? Does he show that by listening to me and withholding judgment until the case is heard out?
For example, if I meet someone and happen to mention that I like Virginia Tech football, I’d feel reluctant to share anything deeper with him if he dismissed following sports teams as an immature waste of time. He’s just dressed me down about something minor, and though he may be partially right, I at that moment think it’s purely his opinion that he presumes to be objective fact, and I’ll be irritated and hurt (unless I’m having an exceptional day). I almost certainly won’t share anything with him that I really care about, because he’ll probably just cut me down again. Small talk, as it were, is removing the pinky part of my gauntlet and seeing if the other knight chops my finger off.
For the question about the “significant conversation percentage,” maybe another illustration will help. Chemical reactions are usually either limited by how fast the reaction can maximally run or by how much energy it takes to start the reaction. Maybe you’ve seen that salt solution that is liquid until someone knocks the beaker containing it and the salt suddenly solidifies. That’s a reaction limited by an energy barrier, by thermodynamical factors. Diamonds turning to graphite, on the other hand, is a reaction limited by its inherent maximum speed, by kinetics. I think change in people is like that. Some people seem to be waiting for someone to give them a little push, and they change almost immediately. Other people may be wanting to change in the exact same way, and they don’t even need a knock to start the process, but it takes such a long time that they might look like they’re not changing. If we knock the latter people, in the hopes of setting off change for the better, we only succeed in knocking them around. The extra energy won’t help the change go any faster.
My assumption is that different people are “ripe” for different changes in their life at different times. If I see a change that needs to happen, I’d rather err on the side of knocking (speaking truth) too gently, because I have no way of knowing if my intuition of where that person’s at is in any way correct. For if I knock him, and he is in fact already changing, chances are good he’ll resent me for what he perceives as my presumptuousness (even though I perceive and intend it as genuine care) and avoid me.
(I wish it were quite that clear-cut; I suspect I often am just too lazy to even go deep or too blind to discern certain truths. But that is a matter for another post.)
Well, there’s more left to say in reply, but it’s getting late, so I’ll add more at a later time.
März 27th, 2010 at 21:47
I realized after going to bed that I just opined in my previous post. I’ll try to get around to more this time, but first, here’s a link to the crystallization of supersaturated sodium acetate - an example of the reaction I was referring to above.
I, too, like the “Who is?” question better than the “What is God doing?” question. It allows for more flexibility in the answer, and is probably not a problematic question if it’s one of the first ones asked. That said, if intuitively the person asked senses (rightly or wrongly) that the question is a kind of shibboleth, you’re doomed no matter what question you ask. I don’t know how to avoid giving that impression, though…
Having stated my clear preference, I do have to turn around and give credit where credit’s due. Without the “What is God doing in your life” question, I would never have been irritated enough to think about what bugged me and think about small talk enough to write a blog post. So, thank you, Jeff.
Heather’s “my way is best” syndrome resonated with both Janet and me. I told Janet that she could probably empathize, having married a man who suffers from it - for her to say that she thinks I could empathize, having married such a woman. I think Heather’s right: habit can blind us to objective reasons for why another way might be better. But more than that: we may even disagree on the criteria that determine how to evaluate which way is better, or even only on the weighting of those criteria, and that would be enough for both of us to feel that we’re objectively right. Janet’s a lot better at noticing the syndrome in herself than I am, but the beauty of marriage is that now I have a wife to gently point it out in me…
I empathize with you both on the teasing issue. It was an issue for Janet and me before we even began dating. I’d tease, and she’d ask me not to, because it hurt. I’d say I’d try, then tease again; she’d be hurt, I’d be baffled, and she’d ask me again not to tease her. It took Janet teasing me about an area I wasn’t confident in (I think it was how to know love and express it) for me to realize why teasing could hurt, and after that I was a lot better at remembering not to tease. All her previous explanations about earning a right to tease by filling up the trust deposit (i.e. giving enough reason to trust that the teasing shouldn’t be taken at its derogatory face value) had made no sense beforehand. Funny how that works…
Fortunately, we have built enough of a deposit since then to allow for some teasing, though I still seem stuck in the “Janet doesn’t do irony” mindset and don’t catch her irony half the time.
I should have said it in my first reaction, but I am impressed with how humbly Jon has been able to take the “trampling on pearls.” And I’m glad you were able to talk about it now - just imagine how much worse it would have been to discover you had been unwittingly hurting the person you love if it had been a couple years down the road! I guess what I mean to say is that I admire anyone who can accept being told that he’s hurt the person he’s done everything to love for nearly nine years. That’s big. That’s what we who profess to be Christians ought to be able to do - but I fear that even if we want to believe we can, we might find ourselves unable to if what we’re confronted with runs against our subtle ideologies. And I’m willing to bet there are many husbands who wouldn’t be able to handle being told that they’ve been hurting their wife for years: “What? hurt my darling? No, that can’t be” - cue the ideology - “after all, I love her!” I hope I can react like Jon on the eve of my ninth anniversary.
Regarding not sharing with Janet: The notable exception in sharing everything with Janet is the area of sexual temptation. Fortunately, marriage has made that much less of a struggle, but I nevertheless think that discussing these struggles with Janet would do more hurt than good. It could sow seeds of doubt and worry that might grow completely out of proportion and do a lot of unnecessary damage.
I’d like to think I generally trust people I meet as well, but I bet I’m still more guarded than Jon. I think I could do with being a little less guarded (the “what-if” approach doesn’t really help, I agree) but I think everyone is more or less guarded according to his level of personal confidence and according to the relationship with the interlocutor in question. (I’d peg Jon as a confident guy.)
For instance, I don’t need to be guarded when I’m talking with a random guy on the train. If he decides to berate me, I can easily shrug it off. I know he doesn’t know me, and I care precious little about his opinion of me. But a friend, or a co-worker? Their opinions matter, at least a bit, and I see a stronger desire to please them or at least not offend them at work within me. I’ll be more cautious about exposing myself immediately, because I don’t yet know how they might react to my vulnerability.
On the flip side, I might also decide to engage in small talk because I don’t know how my interlocutor feels about me. (I wish I was always considerate enough to think along these lines.) What if he lacks confidence, or for some reason strongly values my approval, and I go straight for deep discussions that might re-open old wounds, or expose him to judgment? Chances are he’d be devastated, and most chances for future deep discussions lost. I know I am guilty of some of that, for instance during the time Janet liked me and I was clueless. It’s a minor miracle we were able to patch things up so often!
It’s about time somebody else spoke again, so I’ll stop here, and wait with anticipation for a reply.
März 28th, 2010 at 03:14
Li’l Writer Guy has been uncharacteristically silent, not from lack of something to say, but from amazement at the wonderful things other people say when I close my mouth…er, keyboard. Won’t last long, though. I know from experience he’d never make it as a Carthusian monk.
März 28th, 2010 at 08:59
Janet rightly pointed out that the slight hyperbole of “devastated” might be misleading. I don’t think the person thus hurt would be “brought to ruin or desolation,” that is, destroyed without hope of recovery. I do mean to say that if a knight (in his perspective) holds out his hand without his gauntlet on, and it gets chopped off, that knight will have a hard time taking off any armor again for a long time. Fortunately, our spirits have greater regenerative possibilities than our extremities, but that doesn’t mean we should treat them the harsher for it.
I hope that my errors in degree (e.g. “devastated” instead of perhaps “badly hurt”) won’t be too distracting. Do let me know about them.
März 28th, 2010 at 18:45
I’ll jump in quickly here to say that Jon has been spending the last several days fixing all the brake lines on our car and will not have time to read, much less respond, to these for a while. (Maybe anticipate a comment timestamped at 4am?)
A note from a wife on the areas of husband’s sexual temptations: it is probably enough to know that nearly all men face them and one of the best things you can do as a wife to help your husband resist those temptations is to be (and keep on being) the most attractive (spiritually and physically) and satisfying woman he knows (even when the babies come along!) Praying for him is a good thing, too, even when you can’t be specific because he is protecting you from the details.
März 30th, 2010 at 16:17
It isn’t 4am, but I haven’t started work yet for the day, so certainly I am still on a weird schedule…
Confidence (and arrogance) does have something to do with it, and as you said in the most recent comment, I care less about what “random” people say, so hearing criticism, comments, etc. from them doesn’t really bother me at all - that I feel completely free to reject what they say (though hopefully seriously, objectively analyzing and considering it first).
And so in that sense correction from a less known or trusted person is easier to take, since it is safer to more academically analyze it or something.
As for sexual temptations, I’ve found it helpful to confide in Heather. I’ve heard various counsel to the opposite, but that isn’t what I’ve experienced, so I don’t know.
März 31st, 2010 at 20:54
I’ll add that I have not found this confiding to be worrisome or causing doubt. Rather, it enables me to help him. It is also probably because usually the way he says it is, “You are the best, so much better than [billboard lady #482], let me kiss you!”
Use your own judgment in your case because of course you don’t want to cause your wife worry. (I was going to write “unnecessary worry” but realized all worry is unnecessary!)
März 31st, 2010 at 21:09
I guess a flexible schedule is one major advantage of self-employment…
It’s funny about random people. I basically agree with you (or rather, experience things like you, for it makes no sense to “agree” with your description of how you experience things - all I can and should do is trust your description of yourself). However, I do find that “random” on the train and “random” in church are two different things. It’s much easier to brush off unwarranted and undifferentiated criticism from the former; the latter is family, even if it’s a long-lost relative I’m meeting for the first time, and I ought to care about what they think. I also want to get along with them - live at peace as far as it depends on me. So I find it more disturbing if a Christian comments and criticises without having taken the trouble to get to know me. (On a side note, it’s just hit me that with your gift you may know more about a person than he realizes you know, and he could sometimes react with aversion and mistrust if he doesn’t feel like you made an effort to get to know him. I guess it really can come down to perception at times; I hope that’ll make me check myself before I get irritated by what I feel is an inappropriate question like the one I mentioned at the very beginning of this post.)
As for sexual temptations, I’d be silly to say you ought to do it differently than how it works for Heather and you. I’m happy you’ve found something that works! I guess it must depend a lot on the couple and the personality dynamics.
April 2nd, 2010 at 20:38
#482? That’s not bad - that averages out to a kiss a week from dubious billboards alone!