We can no longer live as strangers

We meet a lot of them every day in places we go to. They are not close family members or part of our private loop of  “best friends forever” or “besties,” but they influence our lives in small or great ways. They are people who essay minor, restricted, or provisional roles but still make a contribution to the quality of our lives. They can be the owner of a neighborhood bakery who calls us by our first name, the guard in the basement parking in the building where we work who greets us good morning without fail, colleagues who infect us with their overflowing optimism, zumba class buddies who sweat out with graceful dance moves, condo neighbors who do little favors for us, our dependable barber or a hairdresser who has been servicing us for years, a smiling food server in a restaurant we frequently visit or a Twitter Facebook or Instagram friend.

Journalist and author Melinda Blau and Karen Fingerman, a psychologist, worked in tandem to bring out a beguiling and instructive work and intriguingly and paradoxically titled Consequential Strangers: Turning Everyday Encounters Into Life-Changing Moments, which talks about the alterations in the way people steer their social landscape. It tackles the story of people on the fringe of our existence labeled “consequential friends” — human beings who are more than a stranger but not quite a member of the clan or a close friend. At first, we might feel that they do not matter but we might just discover the opposite: they enrich us in a number of ways with emotional prop ups, counsels, important services, joys, information and resources, spiritual lessons, and much more. “Having a diverse group of people in our social convoy — both intimates and consequential strangers — enables us to better handle productivity, creativity, and personal growth,” Blau and Fingerman pointed out. We don’t usually expect strangers to be significant in our lives but this work supports the thesis that tangential network members are important in our lives. Here are consequential takeaways from this important read:

• “Being spaces” are nests for consequential strangers. They offer friendly, secure, and agreeable havens for relaxed conversations such as cafes and bars, public parks, online venues, and residential complexes. Churches and other places of worship also provide this kind of space. They can move us out of our comfort zones and into a wider arena of social connection. Here strangers can be transformed into consequential strangers.

• Consequential strangers constitute a large, growing portion of our network ties. Humans rarely report more than 10 intimate relationships, but they often list hundreds of peripheral network members. Since the mid-20th century, family size has declined but modern technology has precipitated a surge in peripheral relations. People who work full time spend a lot of time with them. In fact, even more time compared with their closest relations. Affiliating with them can play key functions in our lives.

• As human beings, we harbor an innate desire to connect to others who make us feel safe. We seek ways to feel surrounded by people who are familiar. Thus, many anchored relationships are touchstones of our daily or weekly routines. We unconsciously anticipate the presence of these people, so much so that not seeing them or encountering them in a different place can be jarring. As the authors related, “You run into your mechanic and his family at the mall and initially experience that frustrating where-do-I-know-him-from feeling. Suddenly you recall him in grease-stained overalls at his body shop, and you remember how he came to your aid a few months earlier when your car wouldn’t start.” Each of the decisions we make, where we live and work, what we buy, what we do in our spare time, how we commune with a higher power can shove us into a whole new bunch of consequential strangers.

• The social media world has accelerated the ascendance of consequential strangers. Community studies since the late ‘60a have shown that we turn to many sources for support, not just our loved ones or people nearby.  Communication technologies of the past, such as the telephone, allowed us to “reach out and touch” and thereby changed the way we manage our relationships. However, the Internet and mobile phones upped the ante. Today’s communication means are cheap, quick and graphic, making us more aware of the members our personal networks, just as consequential strangers dominate our face-to-face encounters.

• We cannot thrive without consequential strangers.  Close ties are important for our survival, but they are not the whole story. The fact is, our loved ones — our strong family ties — know what we know and think the way we think.  Information and opportunity more likely come from people who are different from us, loosely connected, and who, therefore, act as “bridges” to new ideas and different kinds of social groups. Looking at real-life circumstances, it becomes clear that consequential strangers are vital in handling everyday needs and unexpected crises. Through weak ties, a woman carves out an untraditional career, a quadruple amputee survives a trauma, a widow makes a new life for herself, and a disaster survivor discovers a new hope.

• A diverse network is a valuable network. Size doesn’t matter as much as the social mix. Health research suggests that being connected to different types of people benefits the immune system, hastens recovery, and is even associated with longevity. Knowing a variety of people, up and down socio-economic ladder, also puts more information at our fingertips, makes us better communicators, and bodes well for success. Diversity research also suggests that by opening ourselves to consequential strangers, we can begin to discover the commonalities that bind us as humans.

• Each of the people we connect with gives us something different. When we view our lives through this wider lens, we see how far our connections extend. We watch the cast of players who walk on and off our center stage, which gives us both a sense of belonging and a sense of promise. We can get things done because we’re not alone.  We can help and heal others and be taken care of as well. We can discover ideas and experiences that are “beyond what is familiar.”

• Who we really care about are the countless everyday people who touch our lives and influence us personally. In fiction as in real life, consequential strangers are everywhere, even in the funniest and weirdest of places. Some of the most memorable characters in classic television sitcoms emerge from supporting roles: Eldin, the beefy laid-back handyman on Murphy Brown, who doubled as a babysitter, or Rosario, the wisecracking Salvadoran housekeeper on Will & Grace. And just about everyone fits the bill on Seinfeld or The Office, and especially the gang at Cheers, the fictional tavern where “everybody knows your name.”

• Some consequential strangers have their downsides too. They are problematic and idiosyncratic people, scalawags, and those who might turn into enemies. These people bring out the nastiest in us — rage, vengeance, deceit, envy, scandal, and sudden verdicts. But from a spiritual perspective, difficult people can often be our best spiritual teachers. If we look at our lives as an ongoing soap or teleserye, our relationships revolve around our featured characters with consequential strangers assuming supporting roles. A good narrative needs both. “Life is too complex to depend solely on the people closest to us. While not all of these lesser relations are good to us or for us, the vast majority are, among other reasons because we can usually walk away when they’re not,” the authors underscored.

Blau and Fingerman must be applauded for their instructive work. It helps us see how our life is a caravan of interactions and communications that are forever moving, altering and intensifying according to our experience and needs. As Adlai E. Stevenson declared, “On this shrunken globe, men can no longer live as strangers.”

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