Stating the obvious never makes sense to me, unless of course it is what you need to do for clarification or legal documentation purposes. It seems so devoid of thought- of the intellectual ability that God gave us when he created our minds. So often conversation with others seems to revolve around what is immediately observable and well, obvious without need for verbal comment. Perhaps it's a manifestation of great amounts of sensing being used. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but personally, I eventually find the lack of something more to be boring and limiting. Why stop at step one when there is so much more?
In my room, which was formerly a theological library and is now a fine art and personal affects storage site, there is a stack of journals from various family members. In these journals, daily happenings are described in the most straightforward, concise way possible. Content includes who came to visit and when, what the weather was like, what birds were sighted that day, who had their birthday, etc. The authors were not elderly when writing, I assure you.
When conversation stalls and people don't know what to talk about it, why not take a leap sometime and instead of talking about the weather, the decor or what you are going to do that week it might be time to take a leap into the unknown and go deeper, to ask what their opinion is on a current happening, why they like something, how something has changed them, what advice they could give on a certain topic etc. Or maybe just silence could happen? A time for silence, when all fruitful and aimless chatter ceases...
" Silence does not mean dumbness, as speech does not mean chatter. Dumbness does not create solitude and chatter does not create fellowship." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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