Talk to Strangers

Twice in two days I spent time with guys who are significantly younger than me, but who are going through the exact things I wrote about in A Long Walk Home – things I learned from living my own life. These guys aren’t close friends or acquaintances but people I spend time chatting with while doing business with them. In both cases the small talk got pretty personal and two things struck me deeply: First, I’m pretty much a perfect stranger but for some reason there’s a kinship that made these guys feel like they could talk about the messy times they are dealing with which I’m grateful for, and secondly how sad it is that there are so many people going through miserable things in isolation.

I wanted to say, ‘hey, I just wrote a book about that! Check it out it might help you,’ but that’s just about the crappiest move a person could make. It’s like, ‘hey, your life sucks man, here, buy my book.’ Not cool at all, but the urge was strong.

My biggest takeaway is how isolated people, especially young men, are today. The problems people face haven’t evolved (we’re all still really shitty to each other), but technology has put us all on our own private islands without a support system of friends and people who can offer advice or a sympathetic ear. This, to me, is the saddest thing about the modern world, but it’s something we can all take part in fixing. We’re anxious because we’re isolated and we isolate because we’re anxious.

Yeah, I’m going to allow myself to listen to and talk to strangers.