In one of my favorite songs, “Scott Street”, artist Phoebe Bridgers echoes a line over and over again: “Don’t be a stranger”. As the song beautifully laments a feeling of longing for continuity in a time when things were simpler, the phrase is used as a plea to refrain from falling into unfamiliarity. To be a “stranger” is to be unfamiliar with a group of people or a place. Every time we leave our house we become a stranger. We are not just strangers to someone somewhere–over time, we slowly become strangers to those who we were once familiar with. It’s an inevitable title. So, the question is posed: what exactly does it mean to be a stranger?
For years in my youth I was drilled to not talk to strangers, that everyone I do not know could be a potential threat. Yes, not everyone you come across will have the best intentions at heart, but to fear someone solely because you don’t know them is what divides and alienates us from each other. It doesn’t have to be that way.
It’s easy for your existence to feel trivial–in a world of 8 billion people, I certainly do. I often catch myself thinking about how odd it is that when I am in a public space, familiar to me or not, most of the faces I come to encounter are ones I’ll never see again. I think that being a stranger is a privilege. There’s so much unknown in being a stranger, and there is power within the unknown. To go out and have no one know an ounce about who you are is an underrated gift that can be used to truly benefit the well-being of others around you.
It sounds odd, I know, but being a stranger enables a certain kind of freedom. Knowing that most of the people you see in any given place, time, and day are people who know nothing about you and will most likely never see you again grants one a blissful feeling and alleviates social pressures. So why not use this to our advantage to lighten another person’s day? If all you are is a stranger, there’s nothing to lose, so what harm is there in doing something for the benefit of another. At the end of the day, I guess one could dismiss such doings as what my mother likes to call her “good deed of the day”. These random acts of kindness are often just put away as being a good person, or acting out proper manners, yet it’s those small actions that link us together as a human race.
I write this article from the comfort of one of my favorite coffee shops in my hometown where I witness acts of kindness by strangers for strangers. I observe a multitasking mother spill her coffee on herself, her toddler, and all over the coffee shop floor. While trying to clean it up and console her hysterical toddler, I watch as a fellow mother, with a child a bit older than the first one, jumps to the scene to help clean the mess. She says nothing except “I have been there once too”. Such an event has probably happens dozens of times in dozens of coffee houses, but in doing something so simple as just helping lay some napkins on the ground, the woman aiding the distressed mother and her child inadvertently let her know that she wasn’t alone, that her struggle in that moment was more universal than what could have seemed to be. My point here is that one small gesture linked two strangers with two completely different life paths together because of an invisible commonality.
On my phone, within my notes app, I have a note in which I have detailed some of the encounters I have had with strangers that changed the trajectory of my day. Whether it was the time a woman complimented my hair and talked with me about having curly hair and honestly gave me great hair advice, or the kind soul at a Goodwill who spontaneously told me the dress I was on the fence about would look gorgeous on me; it doesn’t take much to use your privileges as a stranger to do good for others.
It’s said that in doing good for others you’re doing just as much good for yourself. You have no idea the impact of your actions on others, whether good or bad. Not everyone strives to bring their best self to others and use their position of being a stranger in a good way. For example, a customer wreaking havoc on a minimum wage retail workers day is all too common a sight, but people like that should not tarnish the reputation or withhold anyone from being different. Like Phoebe Bridgers says, “Don’t be a stranger”, and don’t let the goodness of your soul go unnoticed. In the grand scheme of things, your name or what you look like is not what will be remembered about you. What does matter, however, is your actions. Don’t be a stranger. I know I won’t be.