I’m back in NYC for a short visit before continuing on to DC. I recently had coffee with a lovely human, Ahmed. Ahmed was one of the leads of my Burning Man camp, and his gentle energy, can-do attitude, and kind personality have been influential in my growth into the Burning Man world. Anyway, this isn’t about Ahmed.
Well, it sort of is. Ahmed just completed a two-month wander of his own around the US, and he shared with me a part of his experience that was poignant to me. He noticed in his travels that, for the first time in his life, he felt comfortable striking up conversation with strangers.
Approaching a stranger and having a conversation.
The very idea fills my body with a noticeable amount of dread. I have traveled a lot in my life, and much of it alone. Talking to strangers has always been not only a challenge for me, but actually a source of great self-loathing. “Why am I so incapable of just talking to someone?” “Why am I so awkward?” “Why do I overthink everything?” And then of course, the typical long build-up to approaching someone, and then by the time I’m ready, they’ve already left the vicinity. “Guess it wasn’t meant to be,” I tell myself, breathing a sigh of relief.
I can’t fathom what beautiful experiences and interactions I may have been able to have in my travels (and even when not traveling!) if I’d only talked to that…
- American-looking couple sitting at the bar
- Cute chick reading in the park
- Lost-looking fella wandering the streets
- Friendly shopkeeper looking my way
- Kind barista who kept checking up on me
- Etc.
Of course, my travels are what they are, and I don’t regret anything. But I know that this particular challenge has been a source of great personal struggle and strife in my travels. So while I don’t think there is any “best” way to travel or be, I also think that any area that is a source of pain can be examined and changed, if it’s something you want.
Ahmed didn’t have any magic secrets for talking to people. He just said that he was surprised at how easy it was, and how simple it was to have a conversation with people and to find things in common, when you go into it without expectations.
And maybe that “without expectations” part is key. Perhaps I tend to approach interactions with an expectation or hope for something to come out of it. Maybe this person(s) will…
- Invite me to dinner
- Show me the “local” experience
- Want to go out dancing
- Share a passionate romance with me
- Become a lifelong friend
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with any of those hopes. But when you enter an interaction with the expectation, it changes something in you, and likely in the way you present yourself. I think having expectations of my own drives me to put undue pressure on having a “perfect” interaction. And that in turn leads me to overthink an interaction in advance. (What am I going to say first? What topics of conversation could I raise? What if they aren’t interested in talking? Etc.) By removing expectation, and allowing for an interaction to be simply that (a standalone interaction, fleeting and ephemeral in the flowing river of our long lives), maybe I can better allow myself to have the interaction in the first place.
With expectations unbundled from the interaction, I may open myself up to beautiful conversations, ideas, experiences, and people. Even if they are only momentary.
I will try to keep this wisdom in mind in my travels.
One of the most powerful words in the English language: hello. Many people are so afraid of saying it, or saying it first, that its absence stops them from meaningful interactions with people who also lack the courage to just say that first word: hello. Just saying that word, and saying it first, gives you the appearance of enormous power and courage. Often (but not always) the other person will be so grateful that you took the first step, thereby overcoming their own discomfort and awkwardness. It’s not quite a superpower that you achieve, but it masks you in authority and low level self-assurance with a welcoming pose. You’ll get repaid in kindness and conversation, and they’ll talk with you once you pierced the veil. There’s no game or expectations past the hello, but you never know where a hello will lead.
And if that doesn’t work, bring cookies and offer them to the person. I was shy and uncomfortable meeting new people so that’s what I did on my wander across Europe. At the train station before a long train trip, I bought a fresh sleeve package of Lu Prince Chocolate Cookies (I used a similar food for my Asia wander). After a short bit, I’d pull out the package, open it in front of them (so they knew it wasn’t messed with) and offered it to my fellow train compartment riders. Everybody loves a cookie and it got people to start talking. Later, as I got older and calories were more of an issue, I realized hello worked just as well. But the cookie crutch is a good one and I highly recommend it.
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