How's the weather?

We have all been the victim of this offense. We have all been guilty as the offending party too. We are getting ourselves ready for Monday morning work, a gathering of extended family, or a holiday party. We know it’s on its way, and we are powerless to stop its approach.

Small talk.

Ugh. No one really likes small talk. We ask questions like How’s the weather? Did you catch the game? How are you? How was your weekend? Oh, we indulge in the conversation, keeping it surfacey and lacking depth, hoping the other person will answer swiftly and scurry away to their corner of the world to leave us alone.

What if we stopped with small talk? What if we carried out a revolt against the mundane nuances of the How’s and the What’s? What if we started asking about the Whys and the Reallys?

I loved the small talk world. I was good at it! I worked in the foodservice industry for years, and, really, how deep can you get in a one-hour flip of a table. I got good at making all sorts of small talk around weather, the food, perhaps what brought them in for dinner that day. It rarely went deeper. If it did, it was the fault of my audience, never myself. What about co-workers? Truth be told, when you work as your main form of income relies on making small talk, your peer work relationships stay about the same. It’s a flipped switch once you walk in the door.

You see, the small talk gave me cover. It was my refuge from sharing the hurts and the pains I was experiencing. I didn’t have to talk about the painful marriage I was in, about how unloved I felt. I was reprieved from sharing my lostness and confusion of my identity deep within my heart. I was free from allowing anyone to really know who I was…or who I wasn’t. I could be whoever they needed me to be.

Small talk allowed me to show exactly who I wanted people to see. I worked this to my advantage, working my way up the corporate ranks. By avoiding sensitivity, it allowed me to stay attuned to my performance. I would do all the right things. I would repeat the script word for word. I thought I had everyone fooled. Truth be told: It was only myself I had fooled. Along the way, there was a handful who pointed it out to me. They called me patronizing. Ugh! I hated it. Even worse, I felt their eyes naming me a fake and a phony. Didn’t they know I couldn’t be authentic with them? Didn’t they know I was too much to handle? Didn’t they know I was too broken, and if I were real, they wouldn’t know what to do with that? Couldn’t everyone just let me be everything to everyone?

The script is flipped now. Small talk is not my forte. I’d actually like to think I’m so out of practice, I would fail the exam. That’s what happens when you don’t practice, right? What if we paused long enough to ask about the weather of their soul when we asked about the weather? Are they battling a thunderstorm with anger and dysfunction in their marriage? Are they resting in the eye of the hurricane, in a season when everything seems to whirl around them with packed schedules? Maybe a gloomy, drizzly day overshadows their thoughts with the news of a severe health crisis looming over them. Perhaps today is a sunny day with the birds singing with the news of a good report at work or school.

Depending on your environment, it may not be possible to take every human interaction to a deeper place. We can, however, slow down in our pace to ask How’s the weather…really? Can we intentionally ask about the clouds over someone’s heart? Can we rejoice in their sunny days?

It would have rocked my world to have had someone to see past the exterior, the forced smile, the perfect performance. It may have started my healing journey sooner. I may not have lived in a troubled marriage for quite so long {nearly a decade}. I might have been able to have been the mother my son needed as a young child. I don’t resent those along my path who didn’t speak up or push me, for it has made me who I am. Perhaps it has made me into the person who can see the storm over someone else just a little clearer.

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