Avoiding Glib Grace-Notes in Advent

Yesterday I talked about trying to find an Advent discipline that wasn’t just hard-for-the-sake-of-hard, but that would form my conscience in some way.

Here’s my attempt: I’m trying to undertake a conversational fast this Advent season.  I want to avoid using any one-liners or other kinds of glancing, meant-to-be funny comments in conversation.

It’s not that I want to make Advent humor-free — I’d still be allowed to tell a funny story or an actual joke — I’m looking to prune the comments that aren’t deeply knit into the conversation I’m having at present, grace notes that could vanish without altering the real flow of the conversation.

You see, I’ve noticed that these make up the preponderance of my comments in conversation, and I’m pretty sure that means the proportions are off.  I think I tend to use these both as a way of showing off my own wit and as more customized version of the “Yes, I’m listening” that “uh-huh” or the sign below would indicate.

Offering a quick riff on what my interlocutor has just said confirms I’m listening, thinking, and (sometimes!) that I’m understanding.  A grace note, since it contains a little more content, is more likely to alert my conversational partner that I misunderstood and need something clarified than a simple nod or “uh-huh” would.  Plus, I think some of mine are funny or useful connections.  (And, I still get a pass if these riffs are for the purpose of flirting, though.)

So, I don’t mean to excise these kinds of comments from my conversations year-round, but I think it would be good for me to take them off of the table until Christmas and see what other options present themselves (deeper, more responsive comments; just, y’know, listening; etc) when my defaults aren’t available.

Changing conversational defaults is hard, so I started on the first day of Advent by just trying to be attentive to noticing when I was doing this, instead of letting the comments slip by as normal.  Now that I’ve had a couple days to practice being attentive to this impulse, I’ll be trying to bite back the comments before they slip out, and to get curious about what else I could be saying instead.

If you’re someone who interacts with me in person, you’re welcome to help out by raising your eyebrows and going, “Necessary, Leah?” if I wind up breaking this fast in front of you.