If you’ve been with me for any length of time, you will know that I am decidedly NOT a big fan of small talk. But I am a big fan of real talk. I love and crave (don’t we all?) human connection. While I recognize the role and importance of some measure of small talk, too much of it makes me feel lonely even in a room full of people. So I’m always on the lookout for good ways to nudge conversations out of the humdrum and into the sublime.

He says to himself: “I do not fear those pants With nobody inside them.” I said and said and said those words. I said them, but I lied them. I won’t spoil it for you, but the little creature/person fakes his courage until he makes the courage real, confronting the pants in a showdown that would make Brene Brown proud.

Every time I go to the dentist, I spend all my waiting room time gazing at the office aquarium. The quiet hum and movement of sea creatures calms me instantly. On a recent visit, however, when I arrived at the dentist’s waiting room there was no soothing, motorized hum, instead, I found someone working on the aquarium. This man was lovingly scrubbing at some of the unwanted algae, and scooping up various bits of God knows what from crevices in the coral.

Have you ever had one of these thoughts: How do I parse through this tsunami of (research, data, facts and figures, etc.), and make it meaningful to someone else? How do I quiet the noise in my mind, long enough to form a coherent argument or recommendation? How do I take something incredibly complex and make it simpler to comprehend?