Miguel Martinez-Viera/Contributing Writer
A simple act of kindness is not what I’m talking about. Nor a kind word; nor helping out a friend. What I’m talking about is having a meaningful, unexpected interaction with a complete stranger.
Does this sound like an odd thing to you? Well, that’s because it probably is.
Our society has been gradually isolating itself more and more over the course of this past generation. We’ve been using Facebook to stay in touch with friends far away, and tweeting to Twitdiots we don’t even know. We share intimate details and pictures of our day-to-day lives with who-knows-who, and we’ve come to accept these things as normal and acceptable.
We praise how interconnected the world is while we tap away at our cell phones and fail to notice the human being sitting just a few feet away from us.
We’ve traded meaningful interactions for meaningless distractions.
When’s the last time you had a spontaneous conversation with a person you’d never met before? A conversation that left you feeling different about your day? A conversation that made you question something you believed or simply made you reflect on your own life?
“I think truthful, and general, kindness should happen more often,” Caitlyn Lincoln, a junior theater major believes. “It can be a smaller world than we think it is, and I think some of the most profound moments in my life have happened via a random conversation with a stranger.”
Somewhere along the way, the majority of the population forgot that what had made our species so special was our ability to communicate in a singular, meaningful way with almost anyone else.
Anyone else. Including a complete stranger.
And that may seem daunting, but at the same time, it’s really not. If you’re sitting around campus, you could start a conversation with anyone; you already have attending FIU in common.
I’m not saying it should be forced, that would probably be awkward for everyone, but it should be a little uncomfortable. You’d be breaking down that social barrier that so many of us put up. It might just be easier to post on their wall, or comment on a picture of them nearly naked, giving a “Like” and a suggestive comment. It would probably be more welcome than you inquiring how their day was going, or what was on their mind.
And that’s exactly the problem.
It seems so simple, put down your phone, only use it when you have to make a call or truly need to send a text and interact with those around you.
It seems simple because it is.
But so many feel the need to immerse themselves in their iPhone, hiding away in a cyber space, whenever they’re surrounded by ‘strangers’.
I don’t want this to be taken as just a rant against social media in all it’s forms, I do believe it has its merits in some instances, but I do want this to be something that makes you stop and think, then limit the amount of time you spend disconnected from your present surroundings.
Next time you have a moment to spare, spark a conversation with a stranger. Who knows what might come from it. As Caitlyn Lincoln so sagely pointed out, “everyone who means something to me, at one point or another was technically a stranger.”
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