We focus on friendships, but encounters with those we hardly know are vital too
he stranger struck up conversation on a delayed flight between Florida and New York. We were both struggling to entertain our toddlers, and we commiserated awhile. After the children fell asleep, he told me he’d recently left the Mormon church. He said he missed the community and the certainty he once felt.
Once on solid ground again, the man told me he’d actually had a lot of life-changing chats with strangers. He was inspired by the cognitive scientist Laurie Santos, whose course on the science of wellbeing, the most popular in Yale’s 300-year history, is now. Santos teaches that the pursuit of happiness is often counterintuitive. The things we think will make us feel happier – acing exams, securing a dream job, buying that dress – usually don’t, but small habits can make a big difference.
The researchers observed that we consistently underestimate how much we will enjoy speaking to a stranger, and how much a stranger will enjoy speaking to us – which they demonstrated when they, somewhat remarkably, replicated their Chicago findings with commuters.
Because we don’t properly value minimal social interactions, we aren’t fully recognising what it means to lose them. But I think we feel it. One recent survey suggested thatsay they don’t have a single close friend. It’s a predictable consequence of the erosion of community spaces, the closure of libraries, community centres and pubs, but it also suggests that despite our online hyper-connectedness, many people are struggling to build social bonds that feel meaningful.
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