109. Small Talk

I woke up a few mornings ago to a text from a dear friend, the words “I saw this and thought of you,” along with the attached quote:

Our conversations invent us.  Through our speech and our silence, we become smaller or larger selves.  Through our speech and our silence, we diminish or enhance the other person, and we narrow or expand the possibilities between us.  How we use our voice determines the quality of our relationships, who we are in the world, and what the world can be and might become.  Clearly, a lot is at stake here.
 - Harriet Lerner 

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So Fitting. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about small talk. You know, the three or four “safe” stories I always have handy in my back pocket to pull out if the conversation gets awkward or quiet or you get asked, the seemingly rhetorical, “how are you” or “what’s new?”

As I’ve been paying attention lately to conversation, both my own and others, I find myself curious of what might be possible if through consent and thoughtful questions or silence, we invited and made space for our conversations, to move underneath the surface to a deeper layer of being?

"A real conversation always contains an invitation. You are inviting another person to reveal herself or himself to you, to tell you who they are or what they want." - David Whyte 

I remember in one of our first Fire and Water gatherings, when we were still strangers to one another, Quanita read us this …

“I don’t want to touch you skin to skin.  I want to touch you deeply, beneath the surface, where our stories lie.  Touch you where the fragments of our being are, where the sediment of things that shaped us forms the verdant delta of our human story.  I want to bump against you and feel the rush of contact and ask important questions and offer compelling answers, so that together we might learn to live beneath the surface, where the current bears us forward deeper into the great ocean of shared experience.  This is how I want to touch and be touched - through beingness - so that someday I might discover that even the skin remembers. 

-Richard Wagamese, “Embers” 

And then invited us to share something about ourselves beyond which we thought was comfortable, beyond which we thought might be wise. And to meet each other there.

I was standing in the post office the other day, sending parcels. I looked up at the postmaster (I have no idea if this is the correct title), who was away for several months and awkwardly said, “I am so grateful that you are back. I really appreciate you and what you do, and it’s no small thing to have someone who knows and greets you by name and cares for you, thank you. How are you right now?”

For years, we’d just exchanged casual niceties and with just a simple invitation, sharing beyond what felt comfortable … we had dug under the surface and began talking more deeply … about parenting adult children, how to parent as kids grow up, about wisdom. I learned more about her in five minutes than in years of exchanging parcels and pleasant thank yous. Our talk was anything but small. And I’m reminded, my only task is to get myself fully in the room … in the conversation.

"We are aching to go into these hidden places and reveal them... to say, "This is who I am.  This is what I carry…” But shame keeps most people from sharing at all ... don't want to burden others with their problems... In healthy cultures, one person's wound is an opportunity for another to bring medicine.  But if you are silent about your suffering, then your friends stay spiritually unemployed." 

- Francis Weller 

Too often, it seems to be, we accept bread crumbs as conversation…

Is it individualism that tells us to do it all on our own? That we shouldn’t have needs or burden someone else or that we should have it together or that there are others worse off than us?

Is it that we don’t know how to relate to difference and so we stay where we think it’s safe … on the surface?

Are we fearful others can’t or won’t hold or witness our truths?

Is it “manners” and “mind your business”?

Is it that we are busy judging others and in doing so, also ourselves for showing up a certain way?

Messages of don’t talk too much or take up too much space?

Do we get caught up in what the other needs to hear versus just listening or sharing what’s ours to say and minding our own business?

Are we too busy rushing from one place to the next, not present to the people and nowness in front of us? Is it that someone might need something of us, or us of another?

Do we know how to, or are we willing to truly listen?

Are we attached to our old stories and forget that we can choose and we can share different stories?

Are we forgetting that we are all connected and that having a deep conversation with you, is a gift that allows me to have a deep conversation with me?

Or, is it just … easier?

McKee: I lived in South Africa for five years and I noticed, especially in rural areas there, that the question, "How are you?" often elicited a long, in-depth response, beause people weren't worried about giving "too much information." 

Weller:  Mythologist Michael Meade says there are three layers of experience: 

The first is the social layer: "Hey, how's it going? Fine, how about you?" 

The second layer is difficult emotions such as grief, anger, rage, envy, violence.

The third layer is deep soul contact, true intimacy.  

… you can't go from layer one to layer three without going through layer two, and we avoid layer two at all costs.  We stay on the surface, where we talk about the weather and who's doing what on Capitol Hill.  We need a way, as a community, to get through layer two... if we don't chew on these subjects, they chew on us.  

- The Geography of Sorrow 

A few months ago, I sat on this porch with two friends and more distinctly, elders of mine. Rocking back and forth in the sweet June breeze, green leaves rustling all around us, they each peeled back a layer as we dove deep into our conversation … about me. Our relationship allowed us to skip the small talk, deep questions were asked, witnessing and teachings were shared, hopes and dreams named. We met in that second layer as Meade shared, in the emotions, the darkness, the grief and as a result, we landed at the level of soul. There was a feeling from that short exchange that still hasn’t left me … the intimacy of being deeply seen, cared for and valuable, worthy, loved … connected.

“I need you so I can see me,” as Quanita says.

Not to see me.

But so that I can see

We need each other.

“When is the last time that you had a great conversation? A conversation which wasn’t just two intersecting monologues, which is what passes for conversation a lot in this culture. But when had you last a great conversation in which you overheard yourself saying things that you never knew you knew, that you heard yourself receiving from somebody words that absolutely found places within you that you thought you had lost and a sense of an event of a conversation that brought the two of you on to a different plain, and then fourthly, a conversation that continued to sing in your mind for weeks afterwards.” - John O'Donohue 

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She stood on the other side of the counter, as we waited, together, for the order to be ready.

“How are you today?”I said looking into her tired, brown eyes.

“Not good,” she sighed, looking down, “today is not a good day.”

“Would you like to share more?” I asked.

She shook her head no, but held my gaze as we each simultaneously took in a deep, deep breath.

“Thank you for sharing,” I said, as she handed me the wrapped sandwich, our eyes lingering in the silence, nodding as I turned back toward the door.

“Sometimes people just need to be heard.  They need to validation of my time, my silence, my unspoken compassion.  They don’t need advice, sympathy or counselling.  They need to hear the sound of their own voices speaking their own truths, articulating their own feelings … then, when they’re finished, they simply need a nod of the head, a pat on the shoulder or a hug.  I’m learning they sometimes silence really is golden, and sometimes “fuck, eh?” is as spiritual a thing as needs to be said.” 
 - Richard Wagamese - Embers 

So … how are you? How are you really? What might you share that digs under the surface?

I’ll meet you there.

Until next time …

N