"'After all, origin, as always', I thought and got started: complex question! First, we have to clarify what origin means. The geographical position of the hill where the delivery room was situated? The borders of the country at the moment of the last contraction? Provenience of the parents? Genes, ancestors, dialect? Whichever way you look at it, origin remains a construct! A kind of costume you should wear forever after it has been imposed on you. A curse, as such! Maybe, with a bit of luck, a wealth that is not due to talent, but provides benefits and privileges."
("Origin" Sasa Stanisic)

What does meeting strangers mean to me? - Fear or enrichment?

Maria Fellner - 03.01.2020 @ 21:24

Strangers

by Alicja Danielak, VIII LO Kraków/Poland

We meet strangers every day. Talking about meetings, I mean not only passing someone by in the street or a school corridor but a conversation or a gesture. We cannot completely isolate ourselves from each other. So, can’t some random strangers make our lives more colourful? For me, interaction with a person I don’t know is a mixture of both fear and curiosity about another human being.

Stranger- the word itself indicates that the person is unknown to us and new in our lives. So it is natural for us that something unknown makes us afraid. That fear depends on how bold and daring we are. Fear is a natural instinct, which should protect us from potential danger. But it doesn't have to be a dominant feeling. The unknown arouses our curiosity. Being curious allows us to gain new experience, learn new skills, meet new people, and create memories.

I would like you to take a look at my namesake, the protagonist from Lewis Carroll’s book- ‘Alice in Wonderland’.  When it comes to general understanding what exploration of the world is, I strongly identify with her. She suddenly moved to a foreign, fantasy world, where she met a lot of strange and weird characters. And I am sure that she found it terrifying. For all of us meeting the large, purple, floating in the air Cheshire Cat is not a common experience. But by wanting to discover this world with her childish curiosity, she saw and learnt amazing things. After this adventure, her life was much more colourful than before.  I believe that despite initial prejudices interacting with strangers is worth your while, because who knows; maybe you could start a new, lifelong friendship this way?

Illustration from Creative Commons website

Alicja Danielak - 14.05.2020 @ 13:50 

Hi Alicja!

I really liked it  when you discussed the curiosity of children and connected that with the character Alice. It was a good way of explaining how children resonate when they meet strangers, and I recognize it from when I was younger and employed my own babysitters on the playground. I had never met them, but I still became very close to them and they ended up babysitting me many times. 

I agree with what you wrote about meeting new people. I recognise that feeling of both curiosity and fear at the same time. I've faced many situations where I was supposed to meet new people and I was always a nervous wreck. But then I have friends who love meeting new people and who don't seem nervous about it at all, or it doesn't seem that way. What I'm trying to say is that it's not always your age that steers how you feel about meeting new people, it's also who you are as a person. 

I can't come up with a book that I connect with this topic, but I do, however, know a good movie example: ‘Tangled’. The main character in this movie, Rapunzel, has a little different approach when she meets a total stranger. This has probably to do with her age (and maybe the fact that she's been locked in a tower her whole life, but never mind that). Just as you wrote in your text, Alice is a young girl who is very curious about where she is and who she meets. Rapunzel knows very well, since she's in her 20's, that a stranger breaking in in her tower is wrong and that she needs to protect herself. 

Emma Heinrich - 15.05.2020 @ 12:08

Hi Alicja, I found your article very interesting. You used a lot of examples which visualized what you meant in a beneficial way. The points you made from Lewis Carrol's book Alice in Wonderland were very good. I liked the part when you wrote about meeting new and quite weird characters. I absolutely agree with you, meeting new people is both scary and quite exciting but we always learn new things when we meet new people and do new things- even if it's scary. 

Being curious and wanting to do new things always means that you have to do something that might be scary to you if it's going to a new school or making a presentation. We often hesitate to do things that scare us, and I think that it's a human thing, but when we have done them, it feels amazing. When I read your article I thought about how easy it is to not do something just because you're scared; to learn new things and meet new people we have to do those things that scare us. I think this topic can be connected to ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher's stone’. Harry is a boy who doesn't fit in, doesn't have any friends and hates his "family", but then a large half-giant knocks on the door to take him to a magic school- and he doesn't even hesitate. He just goes along with it, not knowing what will come or actually knowing anything about the magic world, he just knows that it is better than his current situation. He does something scary and ends up in a better place and learns a lot of new things and people. 

In conclusion, I just want to say that I really liked your article and it was very interesting to read.

Christina Stefansson - 15.05.2020 @ 12:16

Your article was very well written and interesting. I found your take on Alice in Wonderland to be interesting in the way you drew parallels to the novel and the "real" world, that we should take more risks to be more curious. I agree with what you write and I believe that we should go out into the world and meet strangers because you never know who you will meet and perhaps they will make our lives more colourful as you wrote. 

Something I thought of while reading your article was that maybe we aren't afraid to meet new people, perhaps because we are content with what we already have. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't go out and meet strangers. But sometimes the people we already have in our life give our life "colour" as well. 

Lastly, I believe that there are a lot of books that can relate to this topic. In almost every book, there are always meetings with strangers and they later become friends. That can teach us to be more open to meeting new people because we know what good things can come from it.

Vera Petersson - 15.05.2020 @ 12:34

Dear Alicja,

I read your article about "Meeting strangers" and I am of the view that it sums it up pretty well. You have built up your arguments extensively, you have taken into consideration different aspects as well, which I totally agree with.

Though, I have a few more things to add. Meeting strangers goes together with normal anxiety. In these cases you have to step out of your comfort zone, that means the well-known, safe environment which we love and feel comfortable with changes. The resulted anxiety is a normal process, which you have mentioned as fear in your article. The capability of how much someone can step out of their comfort zone depends on a lot of things. On one hand, in depends on the personality, behaviour and on the other hand, along with this, it is influenced by the person's social environment.

 I am of the view that it is important to meet strangers, to try out new things, because as you mentioned as well, new experiences and learning new different things are constructive, have positive impacts on us. I would like to close my comment with a quote by William Butler Yeats, which says: There are no strangers here, only friends you haven't yet met.

Dalma Kovács - 02.06.2020 @ 18:13