“Hi.”

“How are you?”

“I’m tired.”

A bit of complaining about daily problems and the reassurance that everything will be better: this is how I start most of my conversations with my friends. I use the same pattern to avoid the awkward silences and to beat around the bush when I actually want to discuss sensitive subjects. Small talk is the wall that I put up to hide my vulnerability, even though I know that this social norm will not get me closer to people.

As an introvert, I have a natural penchant to conserve my energy by sometimes avoiding contact with others. This doesn’t mean that I am a hermit that hides away out of the fear of socializing, but simply that I’d rather not waste my time in flat conversations on mundane topics. Whereas small talk will give me the taste of a pleasant conversation, I prefer engaging in meaningful conversations that will leave me with something to think over.

Small talk can be a great opportunity to connect with people, but sometimes, it acts as a barrier that discourages me from being my true self. Answers like “I’m good” and “couldn’t be better” have become clichés that add nothing unique to my life. This means that I don’t stand out of the crowd when I search for approval or sympathy. Instead, I feel unique when I talk about meaningful ideas that make a difference.

There are moments in life when impromptu conversations pop up out of the blue, breaking the daily small talk routine. I was in Prague, exploring the city, when a stranger asked me what I want to do on the last day of my life. Strangers do not generally ask these kind of questions, but at that moment, I felt compelled to answer. For a minute, the stranger and I forged a bond around death.

For someone like me who is fed up with small talk, the fact that I didn’t have to introduce myself in order to jump into a deeper conversation was a blessing. For the first time, my brain was stimulated to think about a subject that mattered. Who cares about people’s name when death is an imminent issue?

At that moment, the lack of formality reminded me of the happiness that I usually displayed, unlike when I found myself answering that I am fine when I am not fine at all. Trying to find an explanation for the urge that made me hide my true feelings, I discovered that I was afraid of not fitting into the larger picture of happy, satisfied people. Moreover, my reluctancy stemmed from the fear of being honest by asking the things that I really wanted to ask.

Often, I engage in conversations having no interest in the person in front of me, and I expect nothing but meaningless answers. During Marhaba, I asked people’s names and countries of origin so often that it became routine. It didn’t work out quite well, as my silly game of mapping the world according to my peers’ nationalities failed when I forgot half of the names in a few minutes. In the end, I realized that my obsession with creating stereotypes prevented me from asking real questions that matter. In essence, small talk is a mannerism that reveals different levels of superficiality. We pretend that we are getting to know people sincerely when we consider identifiers such as their name or country of origin as being inextricably tied to them. We hold off interesting questions to make it easier to cope with the lack of context about a person. While there is no harm in trying to break the ice with small talk, there are better ways of reaching people. We don’t need small talk to lead up to a deeper connection; instead, we can stimulate a meaningful thread of discussion just by being authentic and true to ourselves.