In a Perfect World

You step onto the bus. It’s a three hour ride to your destination. The bus is full, so someone sits down beside you. The six hundred thousand dollar question: Do I strike up a conversation with this person?

My default answer is “no.” I am an off the chart introvert. It means I get my energy from being alone. I am not anti-social; it’s just that talking to people is work. I smile as they sit down. Then I put on my headphones, get out a book, don’t make eye contact and communicate in the strongest possible way that I have no desire whatsoever to talk to them. Call me rude, I can live with it.

A recent column by David Brooks, “Why Your Social Life is Not What it Should Be,” https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/25/opinion/social-life-talk-strangers.html suggests that, according to researcher Nicholas Epley, our social lives would be greatly enhanced by striking up conversations with strangers on public transportation or other settings. He posits that people underestimate how much they will enjoy chatting with a stranger, how much they would relish in-depth conversations, etc. In a perfect world this might be true.

We do not, however, live in a perfect world. David Brooks’ position is a typically white male perspective. It assumes a certain amount of safety and power to be the one initiating the conversation. As a professional woman often traveling alone, this same behavior can be downright dangerous. I’m not paranoid, I am a realist.

In our world, a Muslim, a Sikh, a person of color, an obese person, a person with a speech impediment or learning disability does not enjoy the same freedoms as an intelligent, articulate, privileged white man when it comes to conversation. We are not all valued equally or given the same opportunities. People like Muslims and Sikhs are probably just happy to get home without someone spitting on them or yelling at them to go back where they came from. We may be social creatures, but we are also people who judge books by their covers.

In a perfect world, it would be safe for everyone on the bus to talk to everyone else.  The truth of every faith tradition is that each person is a beloved of the Divine. My own tradition, the Judeo Christian tradition, makes it clear from the beginning that humanity is made in the image of the Divine. Creation is made in the image of the Divine. It means that everything is holy, including us and including everyone else. Introverted women, people who wear distinctive clothing because of their faith, people who have difficulty communicating or look different because of physical characteristics are the beloved of the Divine just as we are.  

In a perfect world we would live out that truth whether we talk to strangers or not. As for me, I will do what I have always done, and hope it makes the world a little better. I will give up my seat to an elderly person or a person with a couple kids and twenty shopping bags. I will smile at the Muslim man or the Sikh woman and let them know there is at least one friendly face on the bus. I will share my candy bar with the obese man to show that I bear no judgement. I will greet the young woman being hasseled by a man she is trying to get away from, as if she is my best friend’s granddaughter.

I may not make small talk about the weather, but I don’t think that is what makes for a perfect world.