The Case for Deep Conversation in a World of Small Talk | The Walrus
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I start my first job working as a barista at a coffee shop. I love the lightning-fast pace of the morning rush, the magical dance while working the bar with someone else, the long slew of orders tag-teamed with proficiency and speed, and the number of people I get to talk to every day. And it is here at this bustling neighbourhood coffee shop that I first realize a specific kind of heartbreaking rejection whenever I ask customers, “How are you?” and they respond with an automated, unreflective, one-word “Finethankyouhowareyou.”
At first, my little sixteen-year-old heart takes it personally when people don’t engage: Do they not want to talk to me? Do they not realize how seriously I mean it—that me asking isn’t just a formality, that I truly want to know? Or is it that they’re so closed off that they don’t even know how they’re doing? Do they not know that I am inviting them into a moment of human connection, even here (especially here) at this coffee shop chain in the centre of suburbia?
There is definitely the argument here that it’s simply not that deep; first of all, no one owes anyone any access or insight into their lives at any moment, and it is completely acceptable to not engage when someone tries to strike up a conversation. Also, there isn’t actually very much time at all in how long it takes to make a cappuccino to necessarily share even an anecdote about anyone’s day, let alone give a remotely meaningful (or, gasp, vulnerable!) answer. Sometimes the time someone has waiting for their coffee is the only four minutes they have to themselves that day, and they don’t want to spend that time unpacking their inner feelings to a teenage barista. I get it. AND YET.
To take the world overwhelmingly seriously is what makes me Not Fun at Parties, and it is also the role of the poet: to marvel at a blade of grass, to become fascinated with moments of monotony like waiting in line and where our minds wander while folding laundry, to take a magnifying glass to the simplest things and find their significance.
One time, I shared a poem online that I’d written called “All This Love and Loving,” which talks about what I’ve learned from each relationship I’ve had—one of those lessons being to see “the water glass brought to my side of the bed as a radical act of tenderness.” A “troll” of sorts commented on the post, “What’s tender about a fucking glass of water?! You don’t even know how language works, do you? You can’t just make shit up.” I thought this comment was incredibly amusing, because poets literally make stuff up all the time. The art form itself is free of rules, defiant of them, in fact. Also, to ask a poet “what’s so tender” about anything is basically a dare.
In response, I put it out to my online community to retaliate this person’s inquiry by writing poems about tender glasses of water, and over sixty people sent me poems, and even more stories and snippets of their lives: glasses of water brought gingerly to broody teens who keep saying they’re fine. Straws held to the lips of sick loved ones in their final days. The way someone’s husband brought her a glisteningly cold glass of water right after she gave birth to their daughter. Someone working in a restaurant who saw an ex come in with his new wife and brought them both waters after she saw that no one else had done so yet. My Uncle Mike, in his coffee shop–owning days, writing a poem about a kid who never bought anything and seemed to need so much, who would ask for a glass of water but never two. It was our collective defiance against someone saying get over it, it’s not that deep.
To be a poet (or, more broadly, a creative, or even more broadly, any person who cares to walk gently and inquisitively on this earth) is to insist that everything should, in fact, be examined with tender-hearted scrutiny, including: What does it mean to greet each other? Why do we ask “How are you?” if we don’t mean it? What would change about our daily interactions if we did? What if we were able to offer a tiny bit of a real answer when someone asked us? What if we used that interaction as an invitation to open up to each other, even to strangers, even for a brief moment?
Think about the practice and ritual of it: Here we are, acknowledging each other’s existence. Here we are, hopefully for a moment looking each other in the eye. Here we are, first order of business, asking about how we find ourselves today. Here we are, missing it over and over...