EMPATHY | WRITING | CREATIVE WRITING
Why It’s Good to Talk to Strangers
As humans, we’re natural-born story-tellers; let’s share those stories
In the summer of 2018 I undertook a cycle journey that took me almost to the four corners of London. I would later embark on a longer two-wheel-powered trip that took me to farther places, but the one in the summer of 2018 was the one that stuck in my mind the most.
The reasons vary, but at the heart of it is that I saw my fellow Londoners (born here or not) in a different light. Consider that only two years before the country had voted to leave the European Union. A few months after that calamitous decision, Trump was elected president of the US. Although in charge of a different nation, Trump’s pervasive, unfiltered, populist views affected British politics in a way that we’ve yet to address, let alone fix and reverse.
Against that background, I saddled up and headed south down the River Lee Navigation Canal. Armed only with a makeshift sign that read “What Does Love Mean to You?” I aimed to engage with as many strangers as possible. Along the way I also wanted to test the theory I’d first heard when I moved to the British capital in 1997, that Londoners were on the whole an apathetic bunch, more interested in their books and…
