Nothing strange about a stranger.

Over the weekend I went to St Mawes to meet my Dad. On the way back on the ferry I got on behind a woman who was also waving goodbye to her father, a frail looking man who looked quite unwell. ‘That’s my Dad,’ she turned around to tell me, ‘he’s dying.’ I said I was sorry and she replied simply with, ‘Well, people do.’ We then both got on the ferry and didn’t speak a word all the way back to Falmouth but any time I caught her eye I would smile and she would do the same. I noticed she was blinking back tears and decided that, when we got off the boat I would ask her if she wanted to go for a drink. I think part of me knew that this was the most human thing I could do seeing someone as distressed as she looked. Maybe it was none of my business and maybe she was heading home to a family, I didn’t know. I just wanted to feel I had done something to help someone. So, when we docked, I asked her how she was. She said she was OK but a bit shaky and that she was going to go for a pint. I asked if she would like some company. She smiled, yes, she would like some company. We ended up in a pub on the harbour front, her with a glass of Dry White wine and me with a pint of Tribute. We talked a bit about her father and his illness and also the fact that her mother was ill too and she asked me about my course and my background. During the course of the conversation she revealed a lot of personal information. Information that maybe you wouldn’t normally imagine divulging to a stranger. But it didn’t feel weird or bizarre. It just felt like I was at the right place at the right time. Here I was talking with a woman who I had never met before who was telling me things that maybe she normally only ever told her closest friends. I think she just needed to get it all off her chest and it made me think about how we deal with strangers. We very rarely speak to someone we don’t know for any substantial amount of time. We say hello, goodbye, or ask an empty, ‘How are you?’ But that’s about it. How do we know that that the person we are sat next to on the bus does not share the same interests as us? That the person behind us in a shopping queue isn’t just as enamoured with the author we love? We never know. It so happens that I met one of my best friends at a bus stop, so I have a lot of faith in the comfort of strangers and love the idea that a stranger is just a friend we haven’t met yet. But it seems most people more cynically assume that a stranger is just a rapist or mugger. It’s sad that our interpersonal communication is limited to our comfort zones and I think there is a lot to be said about contact with people we do not know at all. I think that when we deal with those people we know and who know us, we are dealing with their perceptions of us and juggle this along with conversation allowing how we are perceived to control our interaction. We are never the same person with any two of our friends. We are multifaceted beings and our communication reflects that. But so many people keep diaries or journals in which they pour out emotions and secrets that they could never tell to those who know them. Why not confide in a stranger? Why not spill out your words onto the blank canvas of a stranger? With a stranger you are a stranger too. They have no expectations of you. You need not impress them. You don’t need to fill the roles that you fill in your other day to day interactions. So go and talk to a stranger. Go and do it now and I bet you feel a benefit.

xx