In Defense of “What’s Up?”

You have likely seen this meme before. And you likely agree with it, at least in some fashion. Yes, you think, I want to talk to people about things that “matter”, small talk is for small minds, “what’s up” is nothing you care about.

What if I were to tell you that all of your talking about “atoms, death, aliens, faraway galaxies” was in fact, small talk, and small talk for the express purpose of not having the important, deep conversations about “what’s up”?

When I care about someone, I do, in fact, want to know, what’s up. I want to know how their job is going. I want to know if they are suffering from seasonal affective disorder, which is caused by the weather. What is up in their life, is, in fact, the most important thing we could be talking about.

Do not get me wrong. I love talking about aliens and magic and science. And I have had some great conversations with my friends and strangers on these topics. They are FUN. But they are, most definitely, small talk. Because they are easy conversations to have with strangers. They do not require any empathy from one person talking to another. I can enjoy talking to you about atoms without actually caring about you as a person.

If you do not care about “what’s up” with me, that is fine. I will happily talk to you about the magnetic wormhole created by physicists in Spain. But please do not mistake as depth of thought what is really shallowness of relationship.

If I ask you “what’s up”, it is because I want to know. Because your life is important to me. Maybe we are talking about smaller subjects, in that they are personal instead of universal, but these are the conversations that matter. And trust me, once the important stuff is out of the way, we will still get to the fun of aliens.