Frozen Lake Social Analogy

I was talking with my mom the other day about shallow vs. deep conversations, and uncovered quite a beautiful analogy that I wanted to share. In this analogy, a frozen lake embodies socialization. Small talk and light interactions are like skating on it’s icy surface. Whereas, deeper and more intimate conversations are found by diving beneath the surface. Skating can be hard, and many of us are really bad at it. But once you fall on your ass enough, and get some practice in, skating can become really fun. You learn how to just flow and enjoy the experience. It’s also necessary to learn how to skate well enough in-order to reach the necessary holes in the ice where there’s an opportunity to dive into the depths. The depths are vast, and scary, especially from the surface. But the further down you go, the warmer it actually gets, and all the fear begins to dissipate. Now, I’m not a ice-water free-diver, so going that far down would definitely kill me, but you hopefully get the idea. The key takeaway here is that learning how to skate on the social surface, via small talk, is necessary to get to the deeper more fulfilling interactions. The better you get at skating, the more opportunities you find to dive into the depths. And in this process, you might just learn how to enjoy one as much as the other.

-Recovered from the recesses of my mind mid-shower