Here we are again! It's a new school year with all of the chaos and excitement and stress that comes with it. Whether you are new to campus or this is your last go round, the beginning of the year comes with newness: new classes, new places, new PEOPLE. There are new people everywhere.
Something that I have started to notice in myself, and with our generation in general, is how afraid we are of interaction. We tend to try our best to not interact with the people around us any more than we have to, unless we have already established some kind of connection with them. We walk around all day, from class to class, passing people on the sidewalks with little or no acknowledgement, moving straight forward in our own little closed off worlds. How often do you sit by someone in class or on the bus and not say a single word to them? Or even turn to look their way? The rarity of a simple conversation with a stranger is startling. In fact, if someone I don't know actually does make the effort to converse with me in situations like that, I am often taken aback, surprised. We are so wrapped up in our own little worlds and we are afraid to step outside the boundaries of what we know. I was thinking the other day of the sheer vastness of our campus at LSU. There are literally thousands of students here. What if that person I just passed without a glance on the sidewalk has every quality in his or herself that would make them my best friend? How easy it is to miss out on knowing spectacular people because we are afraid to put forth the effort of saying a simple hello!
Perhaps this is a part of the degeneration of sociality due to the technological age we live in today; we can fool ourselves out of having real relationships by establishing the digital versions of them via Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, etc.
Or perhaps we are so afraid of rejection that we have ceased to step outside of ourselves. We are afraid that people don't want to talk to us, or don't care to talk to us. We're afraid of being awkward. But we are all the same here; we are all going through the same things. We have good days and bad days and joys and sorrows and, at the end of the day, we are all human. And humans crave companionship. Even if the conversation stops at hello, you never know how far that hello can go, even an awkward hello.
This semester, I challenge myself and you to be bold. To rid ourselves of our silly fears of simply being friendly to real people, right here, right now. Whether it is in your classes, your sorority, or on the street, take a chance to experience new people, new conversations, and new relationships in the real world.
