"MY STRUGGLE WITH AMERICAN SMALL TALK"

"American life is based on a reassurance that we like one another but won’t violate one another’s privacies. This makes it a land of small talk. Two people greet each other happily, with friendliness, but might know each other for years before venturing basic questions about each other’s backgrounds. The opposite is true of Indians. At least three people I’ve sat next to on planes to and from India have asked me, within minutes, how much I earn as a writer (only to turn away in disappointment when I tell them). In the East, I’ve heard it said, there’s intimacy without friendship; in the West, there’s friendship without intimacy."

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/my-struggle-with-american-small-talk

Ya, I'm not a fan of small talk. For a brief time in college I thought I was good at it, but that was because I was surrounded by people who were willing to go into their lives a little and who were unafraid to stray from the script. When I entered the working world, I realized that I actually have a very limited tolerance for pleasantries before something more interest as to happen. It feels like I'm letting lekker suck all the positivity out if me; with people I wanted to get to know better, it felt like we were wasting our time and exhausting each other for no reason. 

I understand the need for human connection, but I've never felt a connection through the small-talk script and the cheerful lilted voice that it needs to be spoken in. This morning, the driver of my Lyft suddenly told me that one of his childhood friends had died the day before. We hadn't spoken much before that moment, just directions, and we only had 5 minutes left in the ride but we talked about grief and being far from home and 

FB: "Everything is subject to analysis until it becomes second nature to you."