One glance down at your boarding pass and you begin to realize that you are sandwiched between two strangers for next four hours, weather permitting, of your life. The obvious distractions, pretend to text and refresh Instagram every 20–25 seconds are both clearly off the table. You could read, but that sounds exhausting and grossly out of character and besides that isn’t going to get you out of at least introducing yourself and making some small talk.
But before you ramble four rehearsed lines about the weather, followed by immediately jamming your headphones in, I challenge you to give a genuine effort to a conversation with a stranger. Whether it’s a plane ride, the line at the coffee shop or server at a restaurant, the world is full of strangers. Full of different experiences, opinions and laughs, and we could all stand to learn some things from each other.
It is so easy to not engage, to avoid the impending truth that we might actually encounter someone different from ourselves and the all around uncomfortable feeling of the unknown. Why do we find it so hard to ask someone how their day is and actually listen to the answer? Or actually give a genuine answer when asked by a stranger?
Countless experiences have culminated from this practice for me personally, because I have come to find most everyone has something interesting or intriguing about them, you just have to ask. We are in every way social creatures, we learn from conversations by constructing our realities together. And beyond personal satisfaction and knowledge, we live in a professional era built on networking. The man sitting next to you on the plane could be exactly where you want to be in twenty years. Or the woman sitting next to him could be cousins with the owner of the company you would like to intern with. The point is, you’ll never know unless you ask. You’ll never ask until you decide to stop shying away from situations that make you uncomfortable. The real secret is that un-comfortability is good for the soul. Those are the situations that make you think, make you laugh, make you wanna blog, because they create growth. So wake up every day, do something that you know you should do, but you don’t want to. You’ll thank me later.
