Stranger Danger!

Toyotas and tokens of Thanksgiving

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

This time of year, with its cool, faded skies and dark biting nights, feels made for nostalgia. For hunting and pecking through past notes to self, scribbled on Post-its or in the margins of notebooks. It’s the time of year for panning for gold in the streams of consciousness we may have captured during the brighter months, and for letting the pebbles that sit alongside the precious flecks of insight be. Deciphering and decoding, calling in and burning away, all at once. As one of my favorite writers Rob Bell likes to say, it all belongs.

I’m a lifelong journaler (about 30 journals and counting so far!) and since beginning to share my writing on social media many years ago, I’ve now amassed enough of my own reflections to make going back and reading things I’ve shared (or kept joyfully to myself) akin to cracking open a time capsule. Sometimes what I wrote and enthusiastically shared feels dim and dated. Other times, the words still crackle with the electricity of a truth that, for me, remains alive.

Recently, I came across one such reflection that for me, still sparkles with the feeling of something true and vital. I wrote the short piece below and shared it to my Facebook page right before Thanksgiving 2017. It struck me this weekend, as I spent time riding in a Lyft from Boston to Concord, that these sentiments about “strangers” have woven themselves even more deeply into the fabric of my heart. I’m perpetually grateful to regularly get to experience encounters with “strangers”: in ride shares, in my neighborhood (where I swap items I no longer need with items I could use with my neighbors I’ve never met) and at Orchard House, where I have the privilege of sharing stories of the Alcott family with visitors from all over the globe that stream through the little green door of our shop every day.

As children, many of us (at least in the West) are taught to be wary of “strangers”. It’s not uncommon for the seeds of wariness to blossom into full blown fear, fertilized by well-meaning parents and grown-ups. Before too long, we find ourselves hyper-vigilant of unfamiliar faces. Stranger danger sticks to us long after we’ve graduated from the playground. One day, at 32 or 40 or 67 years old, we find that our brains have labeled “strangers” (aka human beings we don’t know) a threat. The possibility of a new-to-you human (a dear friend you haven’t met yet?) goes from Our hearts follow suit and build walls and moats and gates to protect us from “strangers.” Even if we find ourselves someday wishing and willing to take a chance on striking up a conversation with someone we’ve only just met, a sense of bewilderment and awkwardness about the process of connecting to another human is enough to make us abandon the effort.

For me, one of the bright sides of often running late, and subsequently needing to hire a Lyft or Uber driver to take me to work or a social event, is that I get a fairly regular dose of time spent with a “stranger”. These sparks of connection have helped to keep the fire of my faith in humanity burning.

I hope that the same holds true for the other human beings I share this finite time with: may they discover, through me (to them, a stranger) a reason to trust someone. In turn, may they invest this tiny bit of trust in the bank of their own hearts, cent by cent, until we can one day learn to greet one another not with a sense of fear, but with the spirit of coming home.

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In a city, it's likely you don't own a car. We don't. We haven't for more than a year. When people we know in suburbs or small towns realize this, it's often "How do you get around?" asked with curiosity, pity, and a sort of secret fascination.

How do we get around? Lots of ways. Buses, trains, bikes, and our very own feet, which after all, are made for walkin' (whether you are wearing boots or not). And once in a while, a car service like Uber or Lyft.

I don't take Uber or Lyft every week or even every month, but I happened to be in one today on the way back from a school site visit for work. I'm helping to schedule an incredible local artist to do a storytelling program with high school students in Boston and I called an Uber after the meeting I had with the teachers.

My driver, a kind young man from the Dominican Republic, asked me out of the blue "Do you work at that school?" Immediately, I tensed up. Why was he asking me about personal information? My parents' well-meaning advice from childhood came to mind: "Never tell a stranger where you live." Doesn't that also mean that we shouldn't tell a stranger where we work? We are taught to be on our guard always, to assume that people may mean us harm, and to avoid revealing too much to people we don't know. And for good reason: these rules help to keep us safe, as children and as adults. They have helped to keep us alive, even if they don't always allow us to forge new and unexpected connections with others.

I decided to answer quickly, briefly. Enough to answer him but not invite further conversation.

"I was on a site visit for my job. I don't work there." I left it at that and looked out the window.

He nodded and explained that he was bringing his nine year old son from the Dominican Republic to the States to live next month and he wanted to know of a good school in the neighborhood--that's why he was asking. I thought of my seven year old nephew and his school: how kind the teacher is and how much he gets to learn and play and grow. I told the man I hoped his son had a good transition to the neighborhood.

He then asked more about what I do, and when I explained that I work for a non-profit that brings arts programs of all kinds to schools, homeless shelters, hospitals and other community centers, we got into a great conversation about the power of the arts. His son plays the clarinet in the DR, and he hoped he could keep doing music here because he loves it so much.

We talked about how much art helps adults, too. How it makes life more fun and learning easier. "Think of all the words to songs that we can learn!" he said. "Imagine just trying to memorize words on a page. Much harder."

When he dropped me off at the train station, he told me good luck with my work and I told him that I hoped things went well with his son. "Have a great holiday!" he said. I wished him the same.

That was it. Human connection on a random Tuesday afternoon, just before rush hour traffic hits. A token of Thanksgiving to carry with me.

We should be kind to strangers not because they will necessarily turn into our friends who might turn out to be able to offer us something in return, but because they are human beings to whom we might be able to give something small to: a tiny spark of hope in other people. A spark that has the potential to catch fire into a giant blaze and burn down the whole damn forest of our cynicism and despair. And in its place, once everything has been leveled and the air has grown quiet, we might discover a bit of green coming up through the dirt, ready to grow anew, and show us a different way to live.