You have to give yourself the space to say what you need to say, right, and not to say needless things.

This thought is weighing on my mind since I read it in the Chronicle yesterday morning. Needless things. What makes something needless? Or, vice versa, what constitutes need with regards to language? Is it needless to comment on the rain when you pass a stranger in the street or does that fulfill a social obligation by which we acknowledge their humanity and subsequent worth and relation to ourselves? To take another example, if we comment on a banal post about the weather online, are we legitimizing and substantiating the banal as something needful since it establishes a line of communication, or should our conversations be judged by their depth of feeling or understanding in the end?