Most of us were taught as children not to talk to or take candy from strangers. (Except for on Halloween, and then get all the candy you can handle.) There is wisdom in this, of course. But we can also take it too far and not speak to anyone at all. At least, not anyone real.
But what would happen if you put down your phone and asked the person nearest you a question? And I don’t mean something surface-y or small talk-oriented either. (I loathe small talk.) I mean being curious about other people and what they think and feel.
Imagine asking a person something like, I know people have a lot of feelings around the election, and I’m curious: how are you feeling about the results? and listening to what he or she has to say. Or what if you asked a person near you in a coffee shop something like, What do you believe happens when people die?
The fear and risk in talking to strangers
For some of us, the thought of asking questions that go beyond the surface is terrifying. For many of us, the thought of being asked questions that go beyond the surface is equally terrifying. All kinds of what-ifs come along with an exercise like this: What if this person thinks I’m strange? What if they just get up and leave—or worse, complain to management?
I get it. I’m not comfortable talking to strangers. It takes tremendous effort to talk to people I know sometimes. My every interaction with people carries a physical consequence.1 But as risky as it can be for me personally, I also recognize that there’s an opportunity in that risk. There’s an opportunity for people to be seen and heard. To experience a judgment-free connection with a flesh-and-blood human being and maybe not feel isolated for a second.
Loving our neighbors by listening
I know you know this, but it bears repeating. We live in near-constant isolation, even when we’re in crowded spaces. We live in algorithmically formed echo chambers, where we largely hear and read ideas we already agree with or radicalize us to the farthest fringes of our views.2 Loneliness has reached epidemic levels, to the degree that teens are falling in love with chatbots. And we’ve been so hyper-sexualized that we don’t really even know how to have friends.
We’re trapped in a cycle of societal and self-destruction, and we don’t know how to get out. And if we really believe that loving our neighbors as ourselves (Matthew 27:39) is as important as Jesus did, I’m not sure we can keep ignoring the problem. And we definitely can’t continue to let the problem shape us as it has over the last 20 years.
Which takes us back to the question from the beginning: What would happen if you put down your phone and asked the person nearest you a question? If you showed curiosity about them? Maybe nothing. It’s entirely possible the person nearby might not know what to do with the question at all, and will refuse to engage. But maybe—maybe—someone will respond. Maybe someone will feel seen, possibly for the first time in far too long.
And that alone might make asking worth it.
