Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘While we tend to focus on our close relationships, psychologists have noticed that even what they call “minimal social interactions” can make us feel happier and more connected. One study found that people who had a brief chat with their barista, or simply made eye contact and smiled, felt happier and experienced a greater sense of belonging than those who treated the human being in front of them as an extension of the coffee machine. A 2014 paper poignantly titled “Mistakenly seeking solitude” found that people who were instructed to talk to fellow passengers on Chicago public transport felt more positive about their commute than those who didn’t.

The researchers observed that we consistently underestimate how much we will enjoy speaking to a stranger, and how much a stranger will enjoy speaking to us – which they demonstrated when they, somewhat remarkably, replicated their Chicago findings with commuters in London. We assume that among strangers it’s best to stick to small talk, but when people in studies are instructed to go deep with someone they don’t know, they surprise themselves with how enjoyable – and unawkward – it is.

And yet modern life is organised to reduce these encounters. It has become easy to avoid speaking to anyone unfamiliar. You can work from home or commute with your headphones in and eyes fixed to a screen; you can use the self-checkout or order almost anything via an app. We’re herd creatures who have become antisocial. With our smartphones in hand, we’re forever reachable and yet perpetually remote from one another, distracted by our devices.

We tend to approach strangers differently now: the internet has made it cheap and effortless to speak to new people in far-flung places, or to speak to hundreds of strangers at once, and it has helped those who would have otherwise felt desperately isolated find their tribe. But there’s a cost to building a community remotely while you live among total strangers. One charity survey found that one in five people have never spoken to their neighbours, and one in five say there is no one in their neighbourhood, beyond their immediate family, they could call on for support.

Because we don’t properly value minimal social interactions, we aren’t fully recognising what it means to lose them. But I think we feel it. One recent survey suggested that 7% of people in Great Britain report chronic loneliness. Another report found the same proportion say they don’t have a single close friend. It’s a predictable consequence of the erosion of community spaces, the closure of libraries, community centres and pubs, but it also suggests that despite our online hyper-connectedness, many people are struggling to build social bonds that feel meaningful.

When people talk to more strangers, this isn’t only good for them as individuals, it’s good for society at large. Studies show that an effective way to combat prejudice is to bring people together and get them talking: it is easier to demonise difference from a distance. For all the panic about online echo chambers and filter bubbles, the evidence suggests that our biggest echo chambers still exist in our offline lives: we tend to only hang out with people who see the world similarly to us. And yet the internet is not the best place to meet strangers who might alter your perspective or change your mind. Not only do algorithmic feeds expose us to polarising extremes, but we seem to react with greater hostility to people we disagree with when we interact with them online rather than in person. Researchers have found, for instance, that people are more likely to dehumanise someone they disagree with politically when they read their opponent’s views than when they hear them talk. In other words, in a divided world, one kind thing we can do for one another is find new ways to talk, in real life.’ (from the Guardian)

I deeply appreciated this article, having found its proposition very true in my own life – as I have posted about here over the years. For me the key is not adding any weight to the interaction, so that it can be as light and short as it needs to be.