Talking to Strangers

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I used to be the kind of person who would tremble in my seat in a restaurant hyping myself up to place my order. I would rehearse my order again and again in my head to make sure I’d get it right. Gnocchi…is it nyu-kee? Or no-kee? Or nyo-keh? Damn it, I’ll just have spaghetti instead.

How did I go from that to interrupting two strangers in a cafe in a foreign country and ending up going over for a family dinner? And then two months later, flying to another country to visit one of those strangers. I forced myself to get over my fear of rejection. At the end of the day, that was what was holding me back. I was afraid of saying something “wrong” and having people hate me for it. How ridiculous.

I challenged myself to slowly get out of my comfort zone. I started by complimenting strangers. Sometimes I did face rejection; people either wouldn’t hear me and just totally ignored me or they just straight up didn’t know how to take a compliment. And what did I do? I learned to move on.

Then I tried starting conversations with strangers everywhere and anywhere. Coffee shops, grocery stores, libraries, nobody was safe. It was difficult at first, but the more I did it, the easier it got. People were, for the most part, happy to talk to a stranger.

I’ve always had that desire inside me to hear people’s stories, but I held myself back. Once I…