I love the relationship I have with Reggie, who owns this summer resort town’s only grocery store. I don’t know much about him–not even his last name. And yet, I’ve eaten his mother’s cooking and the other day, briefly met his wife. We see each other anywhere from four to six weeks a year, depending on how much time I spend on Fire Island. We share moments, not events.
As is true of most consequential stranger relationships, Reggie and I couldn’t be more different. Continue Reading »
An artist I saw recently on the nightly news had her own studio–but no one was buying. When people are worried about putting food on the table and health insurance, the artist realized, paintings aren’t usually in their budget. “But at least,” she told the reporter, “I hope that my old customers will still drop by if only to chat.”
When economics define hard times, it’s important to remind ourselves to take pleasure in the non-material reward of connecting with others. It doesn’t pay the bills, but it can help alleviate the stress. And stress, as we all know, makes us more susceptible to illnesses, which then makes a bad situation worse. Researchers put the risks associated with social isolation right up there with smoking and obesity. Continue Reading »
It’s official: The paperback version of Consequential Strangers will be available on July 26. Look for a new subtitle, a new cover, and new cover quotes. You saw all here first! I’m on the road for the next few weeks and won’t be sharing much here.
The antidote for loneliness is to connect with consequential strangers. Having a “tribe,” John told me when I interviewed him for the book, is the flip side of social isolation. All of us experience loneliness at times, but it is most dramatic–and we are most vulnerable–during major life transitions when a dependable “circle of support” is disrupted. In this film, for example, the woman lost her CS at work when she had a baby. Continue Reading »
I can’t believe I launched another blog. What could I have been thinking? Only a few months ago, I was bemoaning the hype around social media, wondering how to get back to my writer self. But I realized it wasn’t the blogging that got me crazy; it was the disappointment that I didn’t have much of an audience (which didn’t prevent me from feeling deeply grateful to the six of you who did tune in!). I kept saying to friends, “Blogging is like sending an email into the Universe, but you have no way of knowing who’s read it.”
So here I am again, now with two blogs–Consequential Strangers and MotherU–each representing a totally different part of my life. I’ll funnel some ideas into in one blog, some in the other, and with others, such this one, I’ll be “bipostal,” contributing to both sites. I’ll express my thoughts and hope that they resonate somewhere in the Universe, share my expertise and hope that it helps. But I’ve let go of the expectation.
I’m not the only bi-postal blogger out there, according to some recent stats on blogging. Approximately half of us are working on at least our second blog, and 68% have been blogging for two years or more. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde’s famous quote about second marriages, “Second blogs are the triumph of hope over experience.” Continue Reading »
I always wondered how the notion of consequential strangers would translate in other countries. To my surprise, a Taiwanese publisher was one of the first to buy the rights. The cover (right) inspired this post. But it also got me thinking: Americans are generally considered among the most friendly citizens of the world, more willing to talk to strangers than say, the French or the English. And yet, despite cultural conventions, the concept seems to resonate with people outside the U. S. as much as it does here. My hunch is that it’s about connection, not culture. Continue Reading »
Sandy (not her real name) was “moved to tears” after hearing me talk about the importance of connecting with consequential strangers in our everyday life. She later explained in an email:
[My tears were] about my husband. I realized when you were talking about how these consequential strangers enrich our lives that my husband (a stay-at-home dad) hasn’t taken advantage of the consequential strangers he has access to, which has led to depression. I also realized that b/c my experiences are so rich and different from his (I get to meet people like you!) that he’s missing out and I just want him to be able to share experiences and “people” with me b/c it will enrich both of us, as a couple.
Sandy’s story brought to mind a point I often make about CS and marriage: Outsiders can make a marriage stronger! Continue Reading »
Consequential strangers matter. We don’t always pay attention to the cumulative effects of a warm hello, help with a package, a bit of information. But when someone you once took for granted is no longer there–you realize how those, brief, subtle, everyday interactions add up. Manhattan psychologist Mindy Greenstein wrote about such a realization in her must-read piece, My Building’s Protocol, Altered in a Flash. Continue Reading »
My confession about falling down the “rabbit hole” of social media–The Audacity of Hype–is this week’s “Soapbox” essay in Publisher’s Weekly. The piece has garnered quite a few comments. One tweeter described it as: “Moving account of hopes/fears of writer plugging her book on social media (Consequential Strangers).” I’ve also received several emails and Facebook messages and questions from other writers. And PW printed a letter from someone in the real estate business for whom the piece also resonated:
I thought I was a Real Estate Broker, but the last few years it’s been all about desk top publishing/marketing and advertising via social networking. Makes “hauling & hoping” not look so bad after all!
This must happen all the time to bloggers: Earlier today, I intended to write about other connections I’d made through social media over the last many months (see What CS Taught Me). But once Jason Simon (right) popped into my head, I went to his blog, where I found it far more interesting to respond to his question, What is your dream?Continue Reading »
I love the relationship I have with Reggie, who owns this summer resort town’s only grocery store. I don’t know much about him–not even his last name. And yet, I’ve eaten his mother’s cooking and the other day, briefly met his wife. We see each other anywhere from four to six weeks a year, depending on how much time I spend on Fire Island. We share moments, not events.
