Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Talking to Strangers

2023; University of Oklahoma; Volume: 97; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/wlt.2023.a901379

1945-8134

John R. Patterson,

Biblical Studies and Interpretation

Talking to Strangers J. R. Patterson (bio) After a decade of talking to strangers while traveling, J. R. Patterson explores why strangers make some of the best conversation partners. Click for larger view View full resolution Perhaps the worst advice to carry out from childhood, beyond old wives’ tales about giving yourself hairy palms, is “don’t talk to strangers.” Indeed, “stranger danger” is such an embodied part of our culture that, whenever some unfamiliar face holds our glance and asks how we are, we take them for a madman, a thief, or a deviant. It’s a way of thinking that has made a lonely crowd of the world, each of us fearful and suspicious of the Other. The crooked thing about this fear is that it lives in thin air. A stranger is by definition unknown, yet to be seriously considered a danger, a risk must be known. Anything else is supposition, existing within the malarkey of Donald Rumsfeld’s “unknown unknowns.” As that learned fear of childhood subsides, what moves to take its place is embarrassment; specifically, the embarrassment of being proven a fool by stepping into the unknown—where we ought to know better than to tread. That flight of fancy is what thinker Theodore Zeldin meant when he wrote that “adventure starts in the imagination.” One of Zeldin’s many interesting books, An Intimate History of Humanity, examines the history of our emotions, including fear and embarrassment, through a telescoping look into the past. By thinking long-term, historical past—modern love being an extension of medieval ideas of courtly love, for instance—he surmised that conversation, and nurturing the art of conversation, is the best way to transform our lives in a meaningful way. Retrophiliac that he was, Zeldin believed conversations of the modern day to be boring, becalmed in the doldrums of small talk. The apogee, he thought, were the conversational salons of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century continental Europe, where grand ideas of art, literature, and philosophy were discussed with aplomb. Almost thirty years on from Zeldin’s proclamation, conversation still seems marooned. We willingly compartmentalize ourselves, our social spheres shrunk down to the very basics of communication—afraid in equal parts of being infected by the disease and ideology of others, the people we already know are the only people we meet. The rest are faceless, shrouded behind masks and screens; compelling, perhaps (the mystique of those disembodied staring eyes above the face mask is undeniable), but ultimately negatable. Everyone we don’t want to talk to is simply the voice keeping us on the line, an inconvenience on the road to what we want. But neither [End Page 44] do we want to be exposed ourselves. As anyone will tell you, it’s bad form to be too conspicuously curious—much better to leave that to strangers. It ought not to be that way. Strangers make some of the best conversation partners. With nothing to lose and everything to gain, the stranger can bare their soul and leave whenever they like, feeling the thrill and lightness brought on by their openness. And, perhaps best of all, each encounter with a stranger is like First Contact; one might become good at meeting people, but can never master meeting a person; each first meeting is a one-off event. I’ve been talking to strangers for over a decade now, as long as I’ve been traveling. Travel is a condition that requires so much of strangers; it’s their kindness and openness that determine everything for the traveler. New encounters revive us, refresh the mind, and encourage as much introspection as interrogation. It’s the third-degree turned on its head. Instead of questions, you are tortured with answers. “Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger,” goes T. S. Eliot’s The Rock. “Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.” What is most surprising is how little questioning is needed: if you let people talk, it’s amazing what they will tell you. I’ve heard from strangers about abortions, divorce, estranged siblings, infidelity, money problems, and hopes for their own death. The more...