I was at a marketing and advertising conference this week with a couple of other hundred people. I find people fascinating and I enjoy observing how they act and interact. I noticed two interesting things.
1. most people are unlikely to initiate conversation. Most people at the conference were strangers, yet they had a common interest in marketing and advertising. It seemed as though most people were more comfortable to sit or eat on their own, rather than strike up conversation with someone new. I wonder why that is…
2. when I made the effort to strike up conversation with a stranger they were usually responsive and happy to chat. It seemed as though the only thing preventing conversation was one of us taking the initiative to introduce ourself.
We experience multiple situations similar to this everyday. Waiting to catch the bus, lining up at the supermarket, sitting next to someone on a plane. So why do we prefer to sit/stand/eat/travel in silence rather than strike up conversation with people around us?
As a challenge to myself this week, I’m going to take every opportunity to chat to the strangers I come into contact with this week. In a weeks time I will post again on this topic, I’m sure after some interesting experiences with my fellow humans.
What are the potential risks? What are the potential benefits?
As a challenge to myself this week, I’m going to take every opportunity to chat to the strangers I come into contact with this week. In a weeks time I will post again on this topic, I’m sure after some interesting experiences with my fellow humans.
This post is tagged
4 Comments
I am reading GK Chesterton’s Heretics at the moment and your post reminded me about it. In chapter 14, a one stage Chesterton was saying that people go overseas or to a different place “for a change” but if they really wanted a change, they should just go next door and talk to their neighbour:
“He says he is fleeing from his street because it is dull; he is lying. He is really fleeing from his street because it is a great deal too exciting. It is exciting because it is exacting; it is exacting because it is alive….He is forced to flee, in short, from the too stimulating society of his equals–of free men, perverse, personal, deliberately different from himself.”
And later:
“The man in the suburban street is quite right if he goes to Ramsgate for the sake of Ramsgate–a difficult thing to imagine. But if, as he expresses it, he goes to Ramsgate “for a change,” then he would have a much more romantic and even melodramatic change if he jumped over the wall into his neighbours garden. The consequences would be bracing in a sense far beyond the possibilities of Ramsgate hygiene.”
In the same chapter he critiques society and says we are happy to just live in our own clique and not get to know anyone else:
“The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He knows much more of the fierce varieties and uncompromising divergences of men….
But the men of the clique live together because they have the same kind of soul, and their narrowness is a narrowness of spiritual coherence and contentment, like that which exists in hell. A big society exists in order to form cliques. A big society is a society for the promotion of narrowness… It is, in the most literal sense of the words, a society for the prevention of Christian knowledge…etc…”
(Sorry for the long quotes, Chersterton takes awhile to say anything in this book)
But good luck with talking to strangers, it does sound like a good experiment. People like to talk about themselves, so if you keep asking them questions, they will probably keep talking.
Hey Tiger!
&, your comment reminds me of that movie, Spy Game, or something; where Brad Pitt is the spy, trying to get as much information out of the random without actually revealing anything about yourself. . . and the trick is to ask them lots of questions about themselves.
But, generally i don’t talk to randoms because i don’t believe it is a safe or wise thing for me, as a girl, to do.
If it’s a little old lady at the bus stop, sure. . . I can talk for hours about her grandson’s inability to commit to his girlfriends or how the Germans are secretly still running the world.
(And i have actually had both those conversations with little old ladies on buses).
But, if it’s a guy, i will ignore him.
Perhaps that is unnecessarily cynical of me; to assume that all young (or old) men have bad intentions, but i would rather be safe than sorry. And, i feel that men often get the wrong idea when young women initiate conversation with them in public settings.
You, however, Tiger, have such a sincere face and bubbly personality, that i am sure you will do very well at talking to and becoming friends with all manner of randoms that you should happen to meet.
Tiger, I am going to be known as Mr F. I will remain anonymous, but I will continue to comment on your blogs, as I find them most intelligent and thought provoking.
I too wish people were more open to conversations with strangers. I personally love having a good conversation with someone I don’t know. However, I think we are all a little insecure, in that we worry about what others around us will think, or what the person we choose to strike up the conversation with will think. Let’s face it… We’re all a little afraid of rejection.
It’s an interesting point you bring up. I will be interested to see the outcome when I read on.
Thanks for all the feedback. I haven’t forgotten about this, just collating my experiences and will report back soon.
Incoming Links
Leave a Reply