Small but meaningful

I had the pleasure of taking a trip to the U.K. last week to attend Icepops. One thing I noticed was a remarkable ad campaign promoting small talk. What stuck with me the most was an ad that encourages you to ask someone else what time it is. The campaign is a collaboration between Samaritans (a suicide-prevention charity), Network Rail, and British Transport Police. It “empowers people to approach others and offer support through small but meaningful interactions.”

I recently read Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. (I started with the video summary starring John Lithgow and highly recommend both that and the book.) Lesson 12 is “Make eye contact and small talk.” Snyder writes that small talk is “a way to stay in touch with your surroundings, break down social barriers, and understand whom you should and should not trust.”

As the campaign says, “You might worry about saying the wrong thing, but it’s better to say something than to say nothing at all.”