Talking to Strangers
It may seem counterintuitive, but talking to strangers about our deeper issues offers an opportunity to be candid and honest in ways we are unable with those whom we know well. Unlike friends or families, beyond first impressions, strangers do not have any idea about who we are, how we should act, or the types of thoughts we are meant to have or things we are meant to say. In a way, in the presence of a stranger, we can be unambiguously ourselves.
Of course, there is a time and place for this. It wouldn’t be appropriate or helpful to unload childhood trauma on the cashier at the supermarket but it would be appropriate with a psychologist. Part of the value of a psychologist is they are, to use Adam Phillip’s term, a ‘familiar stranger’, an alien to your inner world and therefore, capable of seeing you with fresh eyes. Our parents will see us through the lens of an entire lifetime of development and maturation. Our friends will see us through the lens our particular social dynamic and the certain masks we wear. But a stranger has no history, no preconceived notions, no box to put us in. They can, perhaps like no one else, really see & listen.
Unlike a parent or close friend, the stranger offers a particular kind of solace because, paradoxically, they do not really care about us. Rather than a weakness, this can actually be a strength. Uninvested in your day to day life, the stranger can give advice entirely free from any emotional attachment, sense of duty, or fear of offence. They do not need to tip toe around issues only a family member would know, or decline saying certain things because it may be hypocritical. The beauty of the stranger is precisely that they do not care and this affords them a quality of honesty and straightforwardness which is always in short supply.
Lack of intimacy is a privilege. Because they are a stranger, they have no reason to be personally invested in our emotional state. There is an opportunity, at least, for things to be said, not because they are nice but rather, because they are true. The stranger can say things without fear of resentment or vengeance, as only those without a future together can. The lack of time too, is a privilege.
In a world increasingly self-same, striking up conversations with strangers may yield some unexpected fruits and expand the horizons of possibilities. Opportunities to have meaningful conversations about deeper issues with strangers would be on a first date (freeing yourself from the banality of small talk), with a travelling foreigner, with someone sitting alone on a park bench, a lonely and perhaps despondent soul (for they always have something interesting to say) sitting alone at a bar, and of course, with those most well trained strangers who know how to simultaneously be intimate and distanced: psychologists.
Proper Candor 