Put Down That Phone and Take a Risk: Talk to Some Strangers

One of my favorite paintings hanging at the Art Institute of Chicago is Georges Seurat’s pointillist painting, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. It is a very large canvas showing multiple groups of Parisians enjoying a sunny Sunday afternoon in a park on the banks of the Seine. I recently went to see the painting with a friend, and she remarked that if the painting had been created today most of the people would be staring into their hands at their phones rather than interacting and looking at each other. Since my friend and I had that moment in front of one of my favorite paintings I’ve been observing in so many places exactly what she described, people gathered in groups in beautiful and interesting places staring at their phones instead of interacting with each other.

While technology like cell phones certainly has improved our ability to connect with those far away from us, that same technology may be diminishing our social/relational fitness and our capacity and comfort with actually talking, face to face and voice to voice in real life with the people around us. Social/relational fitness is the ability to initiate, maintain and strengthen meaningful connections with others. Ask yourself, when was the last time you exchanged a simple greeting or had a spontaneous pleasant conversational exchange with someone standing near you in a check-out line or sitting next to you on a city bus? We’re simply out of practice. We’re all staring at the devices in our hands, going through activities without being truly present to the sights, sounds and people in our immediate surroundings. At the same time that technology enables a person in Paris to easily have a video chat in real time with a person in Beijing we are all losing the ability to have easy in-the-moment conversations with people sitting right next to us on a train or in a classroom.

Many people are suffering from feelings of loneliness and a growing body of research finds that the quality of relationships has a great influence on health, wellness and longevity. We all know that exercising and strengthening our physical muscles is important in improving the quality of our health and wellness. We also need to treat social and relational skills like muscles we need to exercise for the good of our physical and mental health.

What are some things you can do to strengthen your social/relational skill muscles?

1. Extend and accept invitations. Ask a classmate or a co-worker if they’d like to join you for lunch. Join a walking group or a book club or an exercise class. Say yes when a person you don’t know so well invites you to join a group activity.

2. Learn the names of people with you whom you interact frequently. What’s the name of the person who makes the coffee at the shop you stop at regularly, a neighbor you see at the park with a cute dog, the person who delivers your mail. Introduce yourself and transform the moment from forgettable to a memorable friendly connection.

3. Welcome the newcomer. It can feel scary to be the new person. I remember the first time I walked into a new yoga class and one of the regulars helped me find the equipment and get myself set up. As a beginner in every sense of that word I was so grateful for the welcoming kindness that helped me feel like I could be part of this group. I’m now a regular who knows the space and recently introduced myself and helped another newbie get set up.

4. Talk to people around you. One of my best memories of just how good this can be is standing in a long line outside the Eiffel Tower in the rain. My husband and I struck up a conversation with two young men behind us as we all considered whether we’d keep braving the long line in the rain or just give up. We encouraged each other to wait and the time passed quickly as we shared stories from our Paris trip. By the time it was our turn to enter, the rain had stopped, and we shared the climb with our new young friends and got some great photos from the top.

5. Phone a friend. Text messages are a convenient and efficient way to exchange information, provide appointment reminders and receive scheduling updates but they are no real substitute for conversation and genuine catching up.

As children many of us were told, “Don’t talk to strangers.” As adults learning to be comfortable meeting new people can increase our social comfort and overall sense of well being. Practice a little and enjoy the surprises of life that can happen when you put down the phone and look around and find someone to talk to.