Chin Wag– Noun [chin-wag] an idle chat
Words–
Nat Woods
@nat.woods_
A few months ago a notification pinged on my Facebook Messenger app — “Stacey has added you to her group: Chin Wags”. The message that followed the invite explained that after attending a casual discussion group the previous Friday night, Stacey and some friends had decided that instead of heading out to events, parties, or bars, they wanted to spend their Friday nights deep in conversation centred around a weekly theme. The message continued to say that; “This will be a judgement-free, compassionate evening open to everyone and anyone. Differing opinions are not only welcome, they are encouraged! However, respect and an ability to agree to disagree is paramount. There is no pressure to speak… Listening is equally, if not more powerful, than speaking.”
I was intrigued and excited about this mysterious new Friday night activity, however, prior engagements, cold nights and the lure of heading straight home after a long week, meant that I didn’t get around to attending any of the discussions – I stayed in the message group quietly observing as each of the weekly discussion themes were announced; Calling people out, How do we do social media better?, The big bad world of dating, The election, Ageing and dying, and more.
Finally, I decided one week that I’d been a creepy observer for long enough and it was time to dive into this conversation group. The topic for the week was Accepting Help – a real doozy for a stubbornly independent person like myself.
Friday rolled around and I rushed out of work on time, pulling up at the outdoor seating area next to the Byron Bay tennis courts (the perfect undercover meeting spot for the drizzly weather). After a few minutes three more people turned up – although I knew a few people in the messenger group, I’d never met these three young women before. Each greeted me as though I was already an old friend. They explained that it didn’t matter whether you were late, or whether you came once and then never again, the point was for the group to be a casual affair with no added expectations or obligations. We all have enough obligations in life already.
After a bit of a casual chit-chat, we dived into the topic for the week. We started by pulling apart what it means to accept help, and whether it’s accepting which is difficult, or whether it’s actually asking for help which we struggle with. Is it easier to accept help from some people and not others? And do we struggle with accepting some forms of help more than others – for example, is it harder to accept financial help over other types of help?
The conversation dipped, dived and weaved. Going ‘off topic’ was encouraged and we let the conversation take us wherever it flowed – at one point diverging into people’s experiences of finding help and guidance through psychics and clairvoyants. The point was, that there was no ‘point’ to the conversation.
Even the moments of silence were encouraged and enjoyed, and we all pointed out the poignancy of four people (mostly strangers) of not only being able to flow through a conversation with ease, but to also find moments of pause and silence at precisely the same moment. How often do we struggle to make small chat with a stranger? Or rush to fill a moment’s pause in a conversation? Neither of those things mattered here.
I’d never met these women before, yet I was able to let down my guard and talk freely about my experiences and ponderings – perhaps because there was nothing ‘to prove’, no professional peer to impress, or no need to keep up any sort of ‘appearance’. Or perhaps because they were kind strangers who had no preconceived ideas about who I was. Whatever the reason, we all agreed that, as adults, it was so rare to come together and speak deeply on a specific topic for no reason other than to have a conversation.
I returned home hours later enriched by a rare conversation that wasn’t work-related, dominated by gossip, or surface-level life updates. And I wondered how I can be a better conversationalist, not just on Fridays, but every day.
Perhaps the key is creating the time and space for idle chat, for conversations with no objective and no constrained time frame – I think that’s something we all need more of right now.
The Chin Wags conversation group meets every Friday at 6.30pm at Byron Bay Tennis. Everyone and anyone is welcome to join for a chat.
Originally published in Paradiso Issue 10