I am gradually getting better at small talk, although it still irks me. I am coming to realise the value of it, slowly – the grease that oils the wheels of social interaction.
This poem says it all:
I think about God.
Yet I talk of small matters.
Now isn’t it odd
How my idle tongue chatters!
Of quarrelsome neighbors,
Fine weather and rain,
Indifferent labors,
Indifferent pain,
Some trivial style
Fashion shifts with a nod.
And yet all the while
I am thinking of God.
Gamaliel Bradford.