I just read this post by Sarah Wilson in which she speculates that Deep (deep conversations, deep thought, etc.) is making a comeback. Boy howdy, do I hope she’s right. Or do I?

I don’t wanna flatter myself too much, but back in high school, I actually had a very cool girl tell me how she had wanted to hang out with me but was afraid I wouldn’t like her because I seemed really deep. In fact, I did like her and really wanted to hang out with her, but I was shy and bad at small talk. I think a lot of people didn’t know what to do with me because I would skip right over normal conversations like “How’s life?” and start in on, “So what’s your stance on abortion?” or “Do you think animals have souls? If not, why do you care so much about your pets? If so, do you think eating meat is wrong?” I was not an easy person to get to know.

Since then, I’ve pretty much abandoned most forms of small talk. In friendly situations, I tend to talk about whatever is on my mind, and in business situations where it’s not a great idea to bare your soul over lunch, I just ask questions and try to keep it professional.

Still, I find myself in awkward situations sometimes because I really crave “deep” conversations, and sometimes I jump into personal conversations, topics that I find meaningful or important, and my friends get a politely frightened expression as though I’ve done or said something awful.

I wonder if this resurgence of depth is going to work out in my favor or if I’ll find myself telling people more awkward and inappropriately personal things than ever.

Tags: blogs | conversations | deep | friends

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.