Talking to Strangers

Because we do not know how to talk to strangers, what do we do when things go awry with strangers? We blame the stranger.

There are clues to making sense of a stranger. But attending to them requires care and attention.

What is required of us is restraint and humility.

To assume the best about another is the trait that has created modern society. Those occasions when our trusting nature gets violated are tragic. But the alternative—to abandon trust as a defense against predation and deception—is worse.

cost or sacrifice, into the familiar and the known, and we can’t.

We think we can transform the stranger, without

We have no choice but to talk to strangers, especially in our modern, borderless world. We aren’t living in villages anymore.

the terrible false jollity that comes at you from every side, braying about goodwill and peace and family fun, makes loneliness and depression particularly hard to bear.

If we tread carelessly, it will crumple under our feet. And from that follows a second cautionary note: we need to accept that the search to understand a stranger has real limits. We will never know the whole truth. We have to be satisfied with something short of that. The right way to talk to strangers is with caution and humility.