Author – Anya Balgauzen

During my High School years my English teacher has been always telling me that she hates the introductory part of my essays. Apparently, she didn’t like that It’s been taking me a lot of time to get to the main point. Well, that is true, I enjoy floating from side to side before I find my balancing point. I find it intriguing. I wish I liked my English teacher, perhaps then I’d listen to her constructive critics, but I didn’t, that’s why I will do absolutely the opposite since we are not in school anymore.

To begin with, I want you to know that I am pretty young. How young? Young enough to hang out with people who are starting their journey to the adulthood. Yes, we are talking about those guys whose hearts are being broken every 2 weeks; those who need to be at work at 8 am but it’s 5 am and they are still enjoying their time holding a bottle of beer somewhere that’s not any close to their bed; those who know that the food needs to be consumed every day, although they can afford a lunch 3 times per week; those, who refer to 40 years old people as “this old man\woman”; those who are aware of everything that’s happening in the world but are absolutely unaware about themselves. Those young, wild and free people in a range of 20 to 30 years old.

So, if we leap into my environment we will find diverse and intelligent young people coming from different parts of the world. We discuss things on a deep level, taking in account all parts of an Iceberg. Sometimes. However, most of the times being in such environment means you have to meet a lot of new people on a daily basis. “Where are you from? What do you do here? Do you like it here? Is the weather better here than in your country?” and all those questions you have to answer five times during one evening. No matter how hard you try to avoid it, small talks will always be a big part of our lives. So, if you are sick of small talks just as much as I am, continue reading because there is a chance I will change your mind.

First of all, as I’ve discovered, small talks are less comfortable than “meaningful” and “deep” conversations. The reason for that, I believe, is that during the small talk people subconsciously feel like they have a shorter time to impress someone. As a result, we start panicking or getting annoyed. Small talk forces us to “sell” ourselves in a relatively short time. That’s a lot of pressure: we have a will (if we do, of course) to describe ourselves without boring our interlocutor. What does it mean? It means we can develop our skill of being fun and interesting during the small talks just as we can develop any other skill. That’s might be incredibly handy for building our careers, for instance. Therefore, every time you tell about yourself, change the way you’re doing this until you find your ultimate manner.

Secondly, small talks don’t necessarily mean a “getting to know each other” conversations. Small talks might be about weather, upcoming weekend plans, traffic or unsuccessful parking experience in the morning. These are the so-called unproductive and insincere conversations that might make us feel very lonely. Although, we need to understand that small talks exist for a noble reason: they are created to prevent hurt. We can get a significant amount of information about our interlocutor without leaving our comfort zone. Arthur Schopenhauer once reminded us that we should always remember, when meeting new people, that they might be very close to commiting suicide. We shouldn’t perceive small talks as something insignificant. Most of the times, the way we feel about the weather or traffic jams might tell a lot about what is on the bottom of our souls at the moment. From my experience, there is a very simple way to make a small talk grow into something more meaningful. If we want our dialogue to be deeper, we just have to simply follow the conversation. That’s it: just be present and ask related questions and trust me, after some time you will find yourself having a great conversation.

To conclude with, I believe that the way we participate in the conversations tell a lot about our personality. Therefore, I invite you to develop this aspect of your life, so all of us will end up having “delicious” conversations on, at least, weekly basis. Cheers to that!

P.S. My resources a.k.a. useful videos related to the topic: