I like talking to strangers.
I do observe the fine, intuitive line that tells me who wants to have a conversation and who does not. Pushing beyond that line is rude.
That said, the weather always makes for a good opening or ‘did you see that?’ or ‘what do you like to read?’, as in my current job at a bookstore or simply “good morning!”
Loneliness is the great affliction of this moment (and perhaps always) especially now when the pandemic isolation is showing its stitches and scars. We have so many stories bound up within. Now at 68 with humility enforced by decades of mistakes and with mortality a daily morning presence in the mirror, I’ll take any wisdom someone is willing to share, even warnings, and I’ll keep my patience with a modicum of preaching, but mostly, I like to hear their stories, those ribbons unwound and freely given over from another life lived as fully as one’s own. They are proof of our need for each other, our perfectly elemental connections of foolishness, love, grief, and maybe perseverance best of all, for that person has made it through, no small thing in a life that can be filled with iron and cold.
Talking to strangers reinforces what I learned as a teacher: shut up and listen and keep your receivers tuned to their most sensitive setting. If you must ask questions, approach from the edges and elicit details. Let them tell you what it felt like and what happened next and how it ended and what they think about it now. The past can be dangerous territory. Respect its areas of darkness.
On the trail a few days ago, an older man, a native of Japan geared up for a long walk, stood to the side when I was coming through with the dogs. I thanked him, he smiled and asked about the dogs, but he was hunched over, laboring. I asked how he was doing. He smiled. I asked how long he had been visiting. He was from Hokkaido, the northernmost island and liked the cold, was visiting a daughter and spoke briefly about a dog he once owned, a mutt, who he had trained to bring wood into the house for his stove. That was it. We wished each other well and went on.
That two or three minutes changed my day. It eased it over toward something light, gave it just enough of a bump to remind me again to stop accepting the old lie that I am the center of the world when all these other spirits are passing by within reach.
