Dear Carolyn: I used to be fairly good at making small talk, and had to do it often. Since being a working parent of young kids, though, I find I just absolutely cannot stand social events where I’m going to have to spend precious minutes asking questions of strangers. I just feel the minutes ticking away, and can’t bring myself to care at all what the other person is saying
I do have actual friends, and find that I would rather spend my limited free time having real conversations with them about our deeper and more private feelings. Do you have any suggestions for making these encounters less brutal?
— Anonymous
Anonymous: Wait, no — no, they’re not. Not unless you make them so by not caring.
These small talks are the runways to the eventual “real conversations” about those “deeper and more private feelings.” Sometimes you just get there right away, but most of the time you and other people need to break each other in.
What you’re perhaps forgetting is that not everyone in these conversations with you is all set with “actual friends.” Some people are going to be new to the school or neighborhood. Some may have had friends move away.
And you can certainly argue that it’s not your responsibility to solve other people’s social problems, but think for a second how easily you could be in that spot yourself. Maybe you suddenly have to move. Maybe your kid transfers to a different school.
Plus, too, you could outgrow your friends, or your kids could outgrow their friends.
Plus, by essentially declaring that you quit, you’ve made all the friends you’re going to make in this life, you’re denying yourself whatever joys serendipity has to offer.
So please think carefully before you demote small-talky situations to a priority below your laundry piles. To me the “waste of everyone’s time” is worrying about laundry. Breathe in, breathe out, be in your moment. Especially if it involves people who want to connect.
Even if you can’t 100 percent get there right now, please at least see the value in it. That’ll do a lot of the work for you, I suspect.
