What Sometimes Happens to People Who Dislike Engaging in Small Talk

People who strongly dislike small talk are people who are often and erroneously labeled as self centered, arrogant and egocentric.

Here is how it works.

I absolutely despise small talk. I always have, even as a child. I likely always will. Usually, when I am engaged in a conversation with someone and particularly if the conversation is with someone I don't know well or is someone I have just met, I have very little interest in the ordinary details of such peoples lives—where you were born, what foods you like, where you went to college, whether or not you have children, what kind of job you have, what kind of vehicle you drive, etc. What I want to know is what you believe the meaning of life to be, what your understanding of the cosmos is especially from a spiritual perspective, what type of relationship you had/have with your parents and how you believe this has or hasn't impacted or shaped how you perceive the world around you, do you believe in ghosts or spirits or angels, what you think of socialism, etc. I imagine most people reading this will see the potential and inherent problems there:

A. Many people feel uncomfortable sharing with people the types of things I eagerly want to discuss. They are uncomfortable discussing these topics with people they've known for years much less someone they don't know very well or have just met.

B. Many people just don't approach life from this angle at least not as much as I do. At the very least, many don't seem to have the time to devote to it or don't take the time. 

Most people are completely engaged in the day-to-day details of their lives and do not venture past that baseline much at all. 

If you have a blog and are on the blogger platform, there will be a toolbar at the top of your blog page that will prompt you to peruse the “Next Blog.” One week, not too long ago, I spent many hours over the course of several days clicking on that prompt. I literally checked out hundreds and hundreds of personal blogs during the course of those several days. Do you know what I discovered and to my utter amazement? The vast, vast majority of personal blogs are essentially living journals of the lives of heterosexual married couples chronicling their everyday lives and the everyday lives of their children. That's it. There was no analysis of those lives. There was no juxtaposition of those lives against the backdrops of homelessness nor the recession nor world poverty nor the unequal distribution of wealth in the world nor the AIDS pandemic nor overpopulation nor anything beyond anything that was not an extremely direct part of their nuclear family world view. None. It was simply Jim and Sally Smith and their three children and their lives as a family and what happens in their everyday lives replete with photos of round faced smiling cherub like children, family vacations and their seemingly Stepfordesque existence. I am not judging any of that. I am simply being the reporter here. I am certain there is much more to the lives of these individuals than what I saw. I want to believe that at least. However, that “more” never showed up on these people's blogs.

C. Boundaries are generally a good thing in life. However, discussing the kinds of things I want to discuss, especially with people I've just met, is viewed as a “boundary issue” by more than just a few people. So there is this built in cultural ethos consciously or unconsciously designed to justify most people's approach to this kind of thing and to vilify my approach.

D. People often view people like me, who want to discuss the type things I want to discuss as “strange,” “weird,” “crazy,” etc.

So what I often end up doing when I meet someone is sharing one of my many life stories, one that seems appropriate or relevant—I have a million stories. I've had a very interesting, full, unusual and dynamic life. I have also paid very close attention to the equally interesting, full, unusual and dynamic world around me. 

So I'll tell one of my brief stories in a sincere attempt to draw the person out or to give them permission to do the same with me or to set the level of discourse I want which is almost always very far from the shores of the islands of small talk. I am very interested in people and what makes us tick. I was a psychotherapist for 20+ years. You don't do that kind of work for that long if you're mostly interested in yourself, especially with the kind of clientele I had—members of the homeless population, triple diagnosed people (severe substance abuse + so called serious mental disorder + living w/AIDS), people with so called “personality disorders,” etc.

So when sharing that brief story doesn't work—and it often doesn't work, I'll tell another story and then another and before I know it I'm entertaining myself—because I admit it, I do love to hear myself talk. But I also love to hear other people talk. 


Often, when I tell these stories, the other person has also been entertained as well, which is often very obvious, even if they simply view themselves as just being entertained by a crazy person. 

Unfortunately, by now the other person has become intimidated by their belief that they don't have equally interesting stories to share or they were never comfortable with anything more than small talk to begin with or the person turns out to be “shy” or shallow or superficial or they're now completely overwhelmed or they think I'm “crazy” or—wait for it—they've decided I'm self centered, arrogant or egocentric to boot.

Almost everyone knows that “asking questions” is a very good and sound way to send the message to the person you are speaking with that you are interested in them. The problem for people like me is that the questions we naturally want to ask are the types of questions a whole lot of people don't want to answer for whatever reasons. 


I spent a number of years during a particularly strange period of my life asking small talk questions to people I had just met in an attempt to meet people where I believed most of them wanted to be met. I felt like a total fraud. It was a disaster. I made few lasting friendships. I was miserable. The main lesson from that experiment? Be yourself Sage, live with whatever the consequences of that are and shame, shame, shame the devil, baby.

Once in a very infrequent while I have triumphantly managed to have connected with a kindred spirit and after my 1 or 2 stories have concluded, they then launched into their own incredible stories and we spend the next 10 hours laying the groundwork for a lifetime friendship.

This is the exact way I have met the 10-12 people on the planet I view as my very closest friends. I met my two very closest friends in this life at the exact same Summer Solstice party in 1990, in Frankfort, Kentucky. One is a beautiful, very counter cultural, other worldly woman. The other is an amazing and extremely counter cultural and anarchistic gay man. And I guess that's the point. The people I'm going to be the most attracted to in this life are going to be the “freaks,” “misfits” and absolute rule breakers among us and the people who are going to be most attracted to me in this life are likely going to be the same because I am one of them as well. I don't need no stinking neo-normative approaches to life and life situations.

Anyway, the woman I met at that party came up to me and her first words to me were, “Hello there beautiful, and what do you think is the true meaning of life, beautiful new man in my life?” and later in the evening the man came up to me and said, “I just love your look. Tell me, what is your definition of love?”

Yes!!!