In this fast paced world full of gadgets and gizmos most of us are stuck with the pre existing notion that strangers are not good by default, while with experience we realize that with every new interaction we become wiser and happier.
Stranger is a word which rhymes with ‘danger’ and hence we tend to conceive strangers to be dangers, which makes most of us reluctant to strike a new conversation in a strange environment with new faces. This is a widely accepted parental idea that most of us are taught in our childhood to be wary of strangers or new people we come across which is substantially right but as we grow up we realize that not all strangers are bad.
The level of maturity of a person and the way of interaction matters the most, the notion that most people have traumatic experiences with strangers lacks any statistical basis. Not even 30% of overall crimes in India are done by strangers, most of the victims are abducted by their own relatives or neighbours in different violent and sexual crimes.
Various studies like the study ‘New family dynamics in a connected world’ conducted by McAffee revealed that more than 50% of the Indian parents are concerned about stranger danger. They try to prevent their children from browsing unknown and suspicious websites in a fear that the oblivious children may encounter a hidden threat in form of a stranger. This explains the fact that small children must be brought up with tailored control of their overall screentime as it may carry some unprecedented danger.
While if we consider as adults by not interacting with strangers we may miss out opportunities to connect with new people and build some really helpful and good contacts. Human psychology is designed in such a manner that we learn more by doing and practically observing the surroundings and interacting with people rather than by just surfing about them on internet. There are times when many people feel lonely, excluded, disconnected and pessimistic. We humans are social beings, when we interact with people we tend to build connections and trust in people around us.
Whenever we make eye contact with someone with a smile, it actually demonstrates ‘You exist, fellow human.’ and it makes them feel good and you too feel good when they smile back, research has shown that if you just look through a person as if they do not exist they feel a small sting.
The present day habits , we are engrossed in our own world with smartphones we neglect the people in our surrounding but do not ,miss an opportunity to interact with new people have opened doors for new interaction.
Danielle Allen, a Harvard university professor and McArthur genius prize recipient said that , talking to the stranger can make us more wiser, empathetic and more worldly.While teaching at Chicago university she was repeatedly warned by her colleagues to stay away from poorer side of the city. She believed that this tendency of her peers eroded a lot of her intellectual and social capacities.She declined to stay away and did one of her best works in those neighbourhoods, later she devoted her careers in fostering connections between peoples and groups that otherwise could not interact.’Real knowledge of what’s in outside one’s garden cures fear but only by talking to strangers we can get such knowledge.
By interacting with strangers you get an insight of mind blogging complexity of the human race and the infinite variety of human experiences. It really impacts how we grow up as adults and live together as societies. It’s how we come to know each other and its only after that we learn to live together. With every positive and good interaction we become more affirmative and the other way round we learn new experiences. In a nutshell the positives outweighs the negatives.
read more : The Desperate need to appear smart is creating flawed individuals, in 21st century
