-
There are things we say
-
when we catch the eye of a stranger
-
or a neighbor walking by.
-
We say hello, how are you,
-
it's a beautiful day,
-
how do you feel?
-
These sound kind of meaningless, right?
-
And in some ways they are.
-
They have no semantic meaning.
-
It doesn't matter how you are
or what the day is like.
-
They have something else.
-
They have social meaning.
-
What we mean when we say those things is,
-
I see you there.
-
I'm obsessed with talking to strangers.
-
I make eye contact, say hello,
-
I offer help, I listen.
-
I get all kinds of stories.
-
About seven years ago, I started
documenting my experiences
-
to try to figure out why.
-
What I found was that something
really beautiful was going on.
-
This is almost poetic.
-
These were really profound experiences.
-
They were unexpected pleasures.
-
They were genuine emotional connections.
-
They were liberating moments.
-
So one day, I was standing on a corner
-
waiting for the light to change,
-
which, I'm a New Yorker,
-
so that means I was actually
standing in the street on the storm drain
-
as if that could get me across faster.
-
And there's an old man
standing next to me.
-
So he's wearing, like, a long overcoat
and sort of an old man hat,
-
and he looked like somebody from a movie.
-
And he says to me,
-
"Don't stand there. You might disappear."
-
So this is absurd, right?
-
But I did what he said.
I stepped back onto the sidewalk.
-
And he smiled, and he said,
-
"Good. You never know.
-
I might have turned around,
-
and zoop, you're gone."
-
This was weird,
-
and also really wonderful.
-
He was so warm, and he was
so happy that he'd saved me.
-
We'd had this little bond.
-
For a minute, I felt like
my existence as a person
-
had been noticed,
-
and I was worth saving.
-
The really sad thing is,
-
in many parts of the world,
-
we're raised to believe
that strangers are dangerous by default,
-
that we can't trust them,
that they might hurt us.
-
But most strangers aren't dangerous.
-
We're uneasy around them
because we have no context.
-
We don't know what their intentions are.
-
So instead of using our perceptions
and making choices,
-
we rely on this category of "stranger."
-
I have a four-year old.
-
When I say hello to people on the street,
-
she asks me why.
-
She says, "Do we know them?"
-
I say, "No, they're our neighbor."
-
"Are they our friend?"
-
"No, it's just good to be friendly."
-
I think twice every time I say that to her
-
because I mean it, but as a woman,
particularly, I know that not every
-
stranger on the street
has the best intentions.
-
It is good to be friendly, and it's good
to learn when not to be,
-
but none of that means
we have to be afraid.
-
There are two huge benefits
-
to using our senses instead of our fears.
-
The first one is that it liberates us.
-
When you think about it,
-
using perception instead of categories
-
is much easier said than done.
-
Categories are something our brains use.
-
When it comes to people,
-
it's sort of a shortcut
for learning about them.
-
We see male, female, young, old,
-
black, brown, white, stranger, friend,
-
and we use the information in that box.
-
It's quick, it's easy,
-
and it's a road to bias.
-
And it means we're not thinking
about people as individuals.
-
I know an American researcher
who travels frequently
-
in central Asia and Africa alone.
-
She's entering into towns and cities
-
as a complete stranger.
-
She has no bonds, no connections.
-
She's a foreigner.
-
Her survival strategy is this:
-
get one stranger to see you
as a real individual person.
-
If you can do that, it'll help
other people see you that way too.
-
The second benefit of using our senses
has to do with intimacy.
-
I know that sounds
a little counterintuitive,
-
intimacy and strangers,
-
but these quick interactions
-
can lead to a feeling that sociologists
call "fleeting intimacy."
-
So it's a brief experience
that has emotional resonance and meaning.
-
It's the good feeling I got
-
from being saved from the death trap
of the storm drain by the old man,
-
or how I feel like part of a community
when I talk to somebody
-
on my train on the way to work.
-
Sometimes it goes further.
-
Researchers have found that people
often feel more comfortable
-
being honest and open
about their inner selves
-
with strangers than they do
with their friends and their families,
-
that they often feel
more understood by strangers.
-
This gets reported in the media
with great lament.
-
"Strangers communicate
better than spouses!"
-
It's a good headline, right?
-
I think it entirely misses the point.
-
The important thing about these studies
-
is just how significant
these interactions can be,
-
how this special form of closeness
-
gives us something we need
as much as we need our friends
-
and our families.
-
So how is it possible that we
communicate so well with strangers?
-
There are two reasons.
-
The first one is that
it's a quick interaction.
-
It has no consequences.
-
It's easy to be honest with someone
you're never going to see again. Right?
-
That makes sense.
-
The second reason is where
it gets more interesting.
-
We have a bias when it comes
to people we're close to.
-
We expect them to understand us.
-
We assume they do,
-
and we expect them to read our minds.
-
So imagine you're at a party,
-
and you can't believe
that your friend or your spouse
-
isn't picking up on it that
you want to leave early.
-
And you're thinking,
-
"I gave you the look."
-
With a stranger, we have
to start from scratch.
-
We tell the whole story.
-
We explain who the people are,
how we feel about them,
-
we spell out all the inside jokes,
-
and guess what?
-
Sometimes they do
understand us a little better.
-
Okay.
-
So now that we know
that talking to strangers matters,
-
how does it work?
-
There are unwritten rules
we tend to follow.
-
The rules are very different
depending on what country you're in,
-
what culture you're in.
-
In most parts of the US,
-
the baseline expectation in public
is that we maintain a balance
-
between civility and privacy.
-
This is known as civil inattention.
-
So imagine two people are walking
towards each other on the street.
-
They'll glance at each other
from a distance.
-
That's the civility, the acknowledgment.
-
And then as they get closer,
they'll look away
-
to give each other some space.
-
In other cultures,
-
people go to extraordinary lengths
not to interact at all.
-
People from Denmark tell me
-
that many Danes are so averse
to talking to strangers,
-
that they would rather
miss their stop on the bus
-
than say "Excuse me" to someone
that they need to get around.
-
So instead there's this elaborate
shuffling of bags and using your body
-
to say that you need to get past
-
instead of using two words.
-
In Egypt, I'm told that
-
it's rude to ignore a stranger,
-
and that there's a remarkable
culture of hospitality.
-
Strangers might ask each other
for a sip of water,
-
or if you ask someone for directions,
they're very likely
-
to invite you home for coffee.
-
We see these unwritten rules
most clearly when they're broken,
-
or when you're in a new place
and you're trying to figure out
-
what the right thing to do is.
-
Sometimes breaking the rules a little bit
is where the action is.
-
In case it's not clear,
I really want you to do this. Okay?
-
So here's how it's going to go.
-
Find somebody who is making eye contact.
-
That's a good signal.
-
The first thing is a simple smile.
-
If you're passing somebody on the street
or in the hallway here, smile.
-
See what happens.
-
Another is triangulation.
-
There's you, there's a stranger,
-
there's a third thing that you both
might see and comment on,
-
like a piece of public art
-
or somebody preaching in the street
-
or somebody wearing funny clothes.
-
Give it a try. Make a comment
about that third thing
-
and see if starts a conversation.
-
Another is what I call noticing.
-
This is usually giving a compliment.
-
I'm a big fan of noticing people's shoes.
-
I'm actually not wearing
fabulous shoes right now,
-
but shoes are fabulous in general.
-
And they're pretty neutral
as far as giving compliments go.
-
People always want to tell you things
about their awesome shoes.
-
You may have already experienced
the dogs and babies principle,
-
so it may be awkward to talk
to someone on the street.
-
You don't know how
they're going to respond.
-
But you can always talk
to their dog or their baby.
-
The dog or the baby
-
is a social conduit to the person,
-
and you can tell by how they respond
whether they're open to talking more.
-
The last one I want to challenge you to
-
is disclosure.
-
This is a very vulnerable thing to do,
-
and it can be very rewarding.
-
So next time you're talking to a stranger,
-
and you feel comfortable,
-
tell them something true about yourself,
-
something really personal.
-
You might have that experience
I talked about of feeling understood.
-
Sometimes in conversation, it comes up,
people ask me, "What does your dad do?"
-
Or "Where does he live?"
-
And sometimes I tell them the whole truth,
-
which is that he died when I was a kid.
-
Always in those moments,
-
they share their own experiences of loss.
-
We tend to meet disclosure
with disclosure, even with strangers.
-
So here it is.
-
When you talk to strangers,
you're making beautiful interruptions
-
into the expected narrative
of your daily life
-
and theirs.
-
You're making unexpected connections.
-
If you don't talk to strangers,
you're missing out on all of that.
-
We spend a lot of time
-
teaching our children about strangers.
-
What would happen if we spent
more time teaching ourselves?
-
We could reject all the ideas
that make us so suspicious of each other.
-
We could make a space for change.
-
Thank you.
-
(Applause)