Skip the Small Talk: Let’s Make Big Talk
Kalina Silverman’s “Small but Spectacular Moment” on PBS aired recently and I leaned in when she introduced the notion of skipping the small talk and making big talk. This is my current life goal with my grown children as well as a few friends. How do we get to what really matters in life, how do I get to know you, the real you at a deeper level, and you, me? Kalina and I both agree that it is by asking the big questions.
MAKE BIG TALK: How Kalina Silverman changed lives by talking to strangers
In this quick video, Kalina relays the story of leaving the Berlin Wall as a college student and seeing a note attached asking the ultimate Big Talk Question: What do you want to do before you die?
With a quick Google search I learned a bit more about Kalina. She is a documentary journalist, creator of Big Talk and a soon-to-be author of a Big Talk book set in 2026. This all started a little over 10 years ago while a student at Northwestern and the creation of her Big Talk video asking the question, “What do you want to do before you die?” ended up going viral. What followed was the usual journey - TEDx, FaceBook, Instagram, a Big Talk question card game, and soon the upcoming book.
Kalina connected a couple dots in my own life. My friend, Paul and I recently shared a our own personal book club meeting on Brian McClaren’s Life After Doom.(I know, not a very inviting title.) We talked at length about this very topic. If the world (or your life) were ending and there was no alternative or remedy, wouldn’t you prefer to spend it with the ones you love in the places you love best? Then just a couple weeks ago at a family gathering I picked up a conversation starter card game, read the question aloud and demurred. But my son called me on it and we were off and running: Name three positive characteristics that describe you. Big talk ensued.
Jesus, too, was an asker of these big talk questions.
What do you want me to do for you?
Why are you afraid?
Do you believe?
Who do you say that I am?
Who touched me?
Do you love me?
Somewhere along our spiritual journeys we will all be called to answer these questions, if not to Jesus, then simply to ourselves so that we can at long last come to answer, what do I truly believe?
My favorite big talk question of Ignatius is, “How are you cooperating with God?” When I first encountered this statement, the post it note immediately went up on my computer. Although the glue no longer sticks, the note remains on my desk as a daily reminder to respond to the invitation. Ignatius was a true advocate of going deeper with his concept of magis, the more. He was referring to discerning ways that might lead us closer to God and develop our relationship with God by choosing the more, the better, the greater.
What if our questions and hence our conversations could do the same? What are the ways that we could all be more, say more, and do more? This “big talk” inherently leads to big action. If the answer to the question, “What do you want to do before you die?” is a verb, something that you’ve not yet done, you will very soon be on your way to hike that Adirondack Trail or parachute out of a plane. Big talk calls to us to go deep in word and action. And once we encounter the notion of that thing we want to do, there is no time to waste. Because… Finitude. Our days are numbered, these bodies are fragile. The world or we will indeed come to an end. So do the thing, whatever it is. Say the words: I love you, I’m sorry, Forgive me. And then keep talking. Share your story; let you, the real you, be known.
Our current political parties have been quite successful in putting us all into boxes and we often think we know more about a person than has been told to us. We can break open those boxes and realize that we frequently stand on the creases of one or more of them by simply having the conversations about our loves, wishes, and desires. Let us together, learn more about each other and open the doors to a fuller relationship so that one day we too might be able to ask of one another, “Who do you say that I am?” and be richly rewarded with the response.