Bubble Wrap, Caffeinated Angels, and the Art of Being Worth Talking To
We are criminally underestimating the value of extraordinary, weirdly life-affirming interactions with strangers. Especially when you’ve moved into a new house and your entire nervous system is being held together with takeout containers and cardboard furniture.
Humans are hilariously bad at predicting social experiences. Researchers threw strangers together with either mundane small talk ("What's your favorite zoo animal?") or soul-baring deep cuts ("What's a hill you’re willing to die on that makes your friends roll their eyes?"). Predictably, people catastrophized both scenarios beforehand (click for a wacky intervention). However, they were spectacularly wrong about the deep conversations. While they underestimated how much they'd enjoy chitchat about Chipotle BOGO specials, they were wildly off base about meaningful exchanges. Turns out we're terrible social meteorologists, especially when it comes to forecasting emotional intimacy with strangers.
The irony is delicious: we spend so much energy avoiding conversations with people we don't know, convinced they'll be awkward disasters, when they're interactions that leave us feeling alive.
Which brings me back to moving into a new home. No scale from 1 (extremely bad) to 10 (extremely good) can capture what happens when a stranger does their job as if their soul’s at stake. I propose we break the scale and replace it:
(1) Piece of Shit to (10) Transcendent Saint with a Socket Wrench.
I’ll explain how I had two social interactions that scored 10 on this scale in one day and how you can produce the same.