The year I fell in love with small talk

A big part of my job is talking, and listening, to people. Naturally, that requires a lot of predictable small talk.

For years, I found these superficial exchanges draining, both physically and emotionally. But they are convenient—and, more importantly, necessary. You stay connected while remaining safely disconnected. If you’re an introvert like me, small talk can be self-preserving: a way to avoid being ambushed with questions about your deepest fears or most entrenched beliefs.

That changed this year.

During a fashion show in January, a fellow journalist and I shared an inexplicable moment: a spark in the middle of small talk. While I cribbed about a deadline, he mentioned how he couldn’t file a story the previous night because his dog had puked on the bed after eating too much chicken and he’d been busy cleaning the mess. Soon, we were swapping stories about our dogs, live-critiquing the clothes on the ramp, people-watching, contemplating if we are too old to be social media content creators, and wondering—half seriously—if moving to another country might be the better life choice. A first-time chance meeting that started with a dry “nice to meet you” had become the start of a friendship.

There is, it turns out, a scientific explanation for that spark.

In an April 2021 study, Merged Minds: Generalized Shared Reality in Dyadic Relationships, published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers observe, “Many everyday conversations, whether between close partners or strangers interacting for the first time, are about the world external to their relationship, such as music, food, or current events … (but) one critical aspect of interpersonal interactions is developing a sense of dyadic, generalized shared reality—the subjective experience of sharing a set of inner states (e.g., thoughts, feelings, or beliefs).”

In other words, when small talk strays off script, it can become a window into another person’s inner life. Shared careers, backgrounds, interests or personalities help. But more than anything, as I’ve realised over the past year, it demands curiosity, just a little.

During a launch party, the celebrity who was on the cover of the book sat in a quiet corner after doing her rounds of interviews, exchanging hugs and air kisses. I walked up to her and after following the polite small talk script, asked—purely out of curiosity—if she ever got tired of wearing platform heels. “No, I find them more comfortable. I can’t run in them, but I can walk fast. At my age, you have to be careful with footwear; the knees complain.”

From there, the conversation unfolded effortlessly. We talked about boyfriends, perimenopause and menopause, morning routines, dreams, failures—and before we parted, she pressed a small box of powdered saunf into my hand, something she carries everywhere, “to remember me by.”

A brief one-minute exchange had turned into a 30-minute conversation about what gives life purpose. All it took was a simple hello.