How to Relate to People: The Tao of Small Talk and David Sedaris the Spy

Small talk sucks. The reason it sucks is counter-intuitive, though. “Because I prefer deeper relationships,” is the reason we share with each other, right? That’s sort of wrong.

I’ll tell you why. It came to me in a flash when something that humor essayist, David Sedaris, said had a violent crash with some Chinese philosophy I read today.

There’s an opportunity to be cool in it, though, because if you do it right you get to be a spy.

“I don’t answer that question anymore.”

David Sedaris had a lame day once. He told a story about it in his Master Class. He’d been traveling all night, and it was morning, and he was getting fed up with the question, “How are you today?” Five people asked him how he was before eight a.m. on his way from the airport to his hotel. He says he grew fed up with that question, and when the fifth person—a cab driver—asked him, he told her that he doesn’t answer that question anymore.

Sedaris used this anecdote in a lengthy explanation of the professional hazard that small talk represents to him.

David is an essayist. Some call him a humorist. If he is, then his humor is based on the scope of human experience, including its heartbreak.

For that reason, it’s imperative to him to avoid small talk. He doesn’t ask strangers vapid questions about their day, because he is on a perpetual research project. Instead, he’ll ask people stuff like “what’s your familiarity with doctors?” or “have you ever touched a monkey?” Sometimes the questions lead nowhere, but he won’t know what mad story he’ll get out of people unless he asks. So he asks, and he gets a lot of material for his work.

He’s an extreme example with a professional reason for this small talk avoiding. We aspire to extreme examples, though. We say we avoid small talk because we want deeper connections.

There’s a keyword there: vapid. I shall explain with some Chinese philosophy.

“Make something big by starting with it when small.”--Lao Tzu

One of the seedling ideas in Taoism is humble beginnings. Small and simple ideas lay foundations for bigger ideas.

Here’s a quote from the Tao Te Ching:

“Difficult things in the world must needs have their beginnings in the easy; big things must have their beginnings in the small.”

It’s from the fifty-eighth poem in the book. The rest of the poem is about how seriously you should take little things. It says that all difficult, great tasks have to begin somewhere. And where they usually begin is with apparently easy and seemingly unimportant little gestures.

So the advice is to take the little stuff seriously, because little stuff is how you get to big stuff.

So that keyword again: vapid. That’s the problem. Small talk itself isn’t the problem. Vapidness is.

Small talk is as important as your approach to it.

All small talk is driven by fear. That’s the truth. Even the most boring person you know is more varied and complex than any fascinating fictional character you’ve ever admired. What people choose to tell you is the hesitant, frightened murmuring of someone with as much inner turmoil as you.

We are all cool because we are all spies. Spying is how to relate to people.

The challenge in any relationship is even understanding someone else. All conversations are investigations.

Taoist philosophy would advise us to approach even the smallest talk with the attentiveness of a profound discussion. Not because it is a profound discussion, but because the depths of a person are a torrent of crazy once you unleash them. You might find that torrent more navigable if you have already negotiated with their small talk.

What are your least favorite icebreakers? Why’s that? Let’s commiserate. Because as much as I’m saying all this and I believe it, it won’t make small talk any easier for me. I’m trying to talk myself into it. I don't know how to relate to people, but I would like to know.