Talking to Strangers

We have a lot in the world right now. What we don't have is trust.

How come?

It's kinda like how I felt when the dentist ripped a tooth out of my mouth with his bare hands. I wanted to slap him. I mean, with all the technological advances, you'd think they'd have invented something more civil.

How come we've developed nothing to build trust among all humans?

Hmmm. I wonder. Maybe it's cause there's more power in fear.

I often tell the story of when I was on Fox News, attempting to suggest that people leave their kids alone -- literally and figuratively. My take was that kids build much-needed independence by trusting themselves rather than being watched over and told what to do. My opponent was a life coach from New Jersey (by way of Alabama) who looked me up and down before the show.

"Chic," she said, under her breath, or I might have thanked her for the compliment. "Can I go first?" she asked. I shrugged. "It's not my show," I said. She did go first, and she said two words: "Fire," she said, and "Terrorism."

There it was. I couldn't believe my eyes, or ears. There it was in a nutshell, the entire media game, splayed out for me:

HEADLINE: SHOULD YOU LEAVE YOUR KIDS ALONE?

SUB-HEAD: EXPERT SAYS NO, DUE TO FIRE AND TERRORISM.

Even though I was mic'd and in the studio, I could see the commercials on break, ads for things like security alarms and fire insurance. I was distraught. I tried to argue in my few seconds of rebuttal that I wouldn't know what to do either, about terrorism, that my son had seen me start a fire and was now more cautious than I had been, having learned.

We have to learn, we have to falter, things are going to happen. YOU NEED TO TRUST YOUR KIDS TO HELP THEM TRUST THEMSELVES!

The life coach followed me out of the studio defending herself. She agreed with me, she said, but "people are stupid," she said. "We have to scare them."

I couldn't even look at her. "I totally disagree," I said. "People are smart. Except when they're scared. And then they get paralyzed."

Ugh. That was years ago, and it's only gotten worse. The media and all of us, on social media, often seem to be feeding from the same pool of fear and vitriolic anger at The Other, The Enemy. We are a world divided, and we get proof that those divisions should be upheld every day, in a million ways.

Enmity is something I loathe. Maybe it is the Libra in me that is unhappy being unbalanced. I find it hard to take one side or another. I want everyone to win. This Pollyanna approach gets many people eye-rolling. Facebook ads for hippie chick t-shirts proclaiming peace and love are sent to me, as much for my personal style I think as my "let's all get along" attitude. The algorithms they've developed for these things today are insane.

I digress, but my point about trust has everything to do with the enemy. If we first trust ourselves, then we can begin to bridge the gap with others. And if we close that gap, well...it's hard to create enemies. We see ourselves in them. We have empathy and understanding of their transgressions in the same way we have empathy and understanding of our own. All we can do is try.

What does any of this have to do with the Spark of inspiration that this blog is about? Nothing. This is all a long-winded way of saying I am starting something new. Beginning soon, I am going to start supporting my new Blog, Talking to Strangers.

Why, you ask? Because Talking to Strangers is what I believe in. It's how I believe that we can move toward a world without enmity. If I talk long enough with anyone, I feel like we can come to common ground, and that's what I believe in. I believe in the power of courteous discourse. Not that it's easy, but it's crucial. And it starts with each and every one of us. We need to use our voices to speak, we need to be comfortable reaching out beyond our bubbles to understand where someone else is coming from. Instead of leaning in, though, we need to lean back. We need to relax, and drop our rhetoric and our assumptions. We need to assume best intentions. We need to just talk.

It starts today, with all of us. Talking to Strangers, with a mind to like and understand them, whoever they are, will create a change in the world, it will change your world, right before your very eyes.

I hope you will engage in this experiment, and share with me what you find.

Find us on Facebook @TalkBringsHarmony,and on Instagram (t2_strangers) and look out soon for TalkingtoStrangers.co.

#talkingtostrangers #talkbringsharmony #harmony