I am not much of one for small talk. I enjoy meeting people, but I like substantive conversations. During this past week I have had to engage in quite a bit of small talk. I was asked to represent a group at a chamber of commerce luncheon, which was definitely a first for me! I went alone and did not know a soul there. I met lots of new people and exchanged business cards with most of them.
The first couple of people who came up to me and introduced themselves followed quickly by questions about who I was and why I was there were met with lots of stuttering and stammering. Who AM I? Why WAS I there??
When someone asked me where I was from I didn’t know if I should say the group I was representing, the city I lived in, or where I was born.
Another person asked me where my name came from and again, I sputtered out an incoherent answer before they quickly drifted off.
But then I hit my stride. I started asking the questions and I got my answers to other’s questions down pat. I made some acquaintances who wanted to sit with me at lunch and then I made one acquaintance who might want to hire me. Although I left exhausted and with my face hurting form smiling too much, overall I think it was pretty OK.
Last night I went to a fundraiser. I knew a few people there and I had my trusty sidekick with me, but I ended up having funny conversations with people as I bid on silent auction items and waited in the ice cream bar line.
With a week full of conversations with the people at the dentist’s office, the workers at the grocery store and bank, and all of these new people I met at the luncheon, I realized that sometimes I talk way more to people I don’t know than to people I do know. Usually I find out way more than I bargain for with these people I don’t know.
Even today as I went for a walk around the neighborhood, I saw a young woman out walking her giant yellow lab. She and I smiled as she went past me, headed the opposite direction from me. Her smile made me feel happy and like just maybe the world is not such a terrible place as some would have us think.
As I came around the other side of the block here came the woman and her dog again, walking straight to me. She laughed that we were on the same course, but going in opposite directions. I laughed and said that we were making laps and seemed destined to meet again and again. Once again, for some odd reason, it made me feel happy to see her, like I had run into an old friend and her dog, even though I had never seen her before today.
Human contact is so important. As I see people I know get older (and even in myself) I see the tendency to want to hide away. Strange people can be scary, the news makes all of “them” out there feel scary to “us.” Feeling that desire to hide inside where we feel safe is a real feeling. I fight it everyday. Lots of days I let it win and I stay in, cleaning house, arranging furniture that then stays where I put it (unlike the people in my life who are constantly changing and moving) and washing clothes that I think of never wearing out into the light of day again.
But that pull to go out and meet people, to find that person who might make me smile, and more importantly might need me to help them to smile, gets me out eventually.
When I was asked to go to the chamber luncheon I did the old, JUST SAY YES. Don’t think too hard, just say yes. Get out there!
As I got dressed that morning I kept thinking, why am I going to this? Why in the world did I agree to this? What is wrong with me!
After a very traumatic experience a couple of weeks ago that I feel certain I will never write about, I have been even more scared to set foot outside of my house, to trust people again. But I don’t think I was put on this earth to hide in my house. I have no idea why I WAS put on this earth, but I am pretty sure washing my clothes over and over and rearranging my furniture weekly is not what I was meant for. So I say YES to new experiences, stick my neck out when I am scared and try to enjoy all of the new people with which I force myself to have small talk.
The best I can hope for is that someone one day will smile when they see me headed towards them in the way that the young woman and her dog made me smile this morning. I think that might actually be enough!
