Take Mr & Mrs Hendy, from Monty Python's Meaning of Life. We find the retired American couple at a restaurant. Like many friends and couples, their conversation has all those awkward silences and half-spoken words. I guess they didn't heed Nietzsche's words, in Human, All-Too-Human: "When marrying, one should ask oneself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this woman into your old age?"
To remedy the silence, the couple orders a conversation from the menu: Philosophy. "Have you ever wondered ... just why you're here?" asks the waiter to the couple, trying to help them begin. "Well, we went to Miami last year," replies Mr. Hendy ingenuously, "and California the year before that, and we've" … "No, no, no. I mean …why we’re here ... on this planet", says the waiter. "Nope", they reply, with satisfied smiles.
The waiter gives them some conversational cue cards, to start them off. "I never knew Schopenhauer was a philosopher", says Mrs Hendy with ingenuous seriousness. "Oh yeah", replies her husband, with a knowing nod, "he's the one that begins with an s". The conversation only gets worse. Eventually the old couple complain to the waiter, who offers them a new conversation (live organ transplants).
In a novel that I've used often in my class on "Love and Relationships in the Christian Tradition", Anne Tyler told the story of Maggie and Ira and the journey that brought them back to communicating in their marriage.
In both instances -- no matter the humor involved -- the real life is right there in front of us to see. We still have those conversational cue cards -- in our heads, not on paper. Psychologists call these scripts: Prearranged sets of themes and phrases. Think sports: The matches, the scores, the players, all given spice by television commentary. Or gossiping about friends. A dysfunctional or dissatisfying friend is a familiar topic for comfortable ranting.
This urge to fill the gaps in talk is perfectly human. Partly because it strengthens (!) our bonds, but also because it calms us. Martin Heidegger, in his opus Being and Time, called this "idle talk" and "passing the word along". For Heidegger, this wasn't a mark of lying or stupidity. We throw ourselves into this "idle talk" because there's something genuinely unsettling about the silences they conceal. As Heidegger saw it, it's because the quiet reminds us of the nothingness that surrounds us -- we come from nothing, we go to nothing, and the life in-between is our own responsibility. Embarrassing pauses are hints of mortality; of our one chance to be something. Like Mr & Mrs Hendy, rather than facing death and freedom, we stuff our ears with talk. Chit-chat is a kind of existential cowardice.
One answer is, of course, silence: Facing the nothingness, and reflecting on ourselves. This is why we have meditation, whether in Yoga, Buddhism, martial arts, philosophy or just a daily walk (without the earphones).
But another is Mr and Mrs Handy's cue cards. Instead of scripts for "idle talk", they're written to provoke reflection, catharsis and perhaps conflict.
My point here is an Epicurean one: Human life is always collaborative. Aristotle was right, we have the gift of speech -- just that sometimes we need help unwrapping it.