My mom, on the other hand, falls into the "social" category of my family. She loves the people we work with and could tell me something significant about each of their lives. I realized that I can't learn to love people if I never even get to know them, and I can't be the kind of person I want to be if I don't learn to love people. So what did I do? I decided to put my mom's approach to the test.
I started by making general small talk to each person that came into my little copy room. I would ask them what they were working on, if the had any big plans for the weekend, etc. I must admit, small talk is the reason I'm not more social. I hate it. It's tiresome and superficial. However, I've realized through my little experiment that small talk is often the dreadful but necessary first step to getting to know someone.
Progress was slow at first. The only change I could detect in my experience at work was that I had to put up with a lot more pointless conversations. I didn't feel like I was good at this whole "being social" thing and was ready to give up when I had a conversation that completely changed my outlook. Lucy came into the copy center at the usual time. I already felt like she didn't really like me because I always seemed to be using the copier when she needed it, but we talked anyway. The conversation started out like small talk. We talked about my plans for college and she asked me what I was planning on going into.
"English," I said.
"Oh, do you want to be a teacher?" She replied.
"That's my current plan," I confirmed.
"My mother was an English teacher," Lucy said, and continued to tell me all about her mother. She was a teacher at a school in Mesa when she decided that she wanted to know what it felt like to be a minority. She requested a transfer to a school in downtown Phoenix that at the time, enrolled about 1% white students. Lucy told me several stories about the things her mother did for her students. She gave these poor, black and Hispanic students their first experience of receiving mail. She let them all touch her long hair, but only if she got to touch each of their heads in return. She impacted her students' lives in a way that I can only hope to emulate someday. When the conversation ended, I was not only amazed and inspired, but my attitude about people in general had changed. Some people will seem callous when you meet them. Small talk will be tedious when you first begin. But every now and then, you have a conversation like the one I had this week, and that makes "being social" worth all the effort.
