The Real Reason Why You Should Always Talk To Strangers

The Power of A Single "Hello"

A simple hello can flip the entire trajectory of your life upside down. One little hello and what would have been your life is no longer. The word hello is an invitation, a bridge, and a beginning. In life, conversations play a dominant role in everything we do. Most of the time we don't think much of them, but we never really know where a simple "hello" will take us.

Opportunities Arise

Fresh out of college, I worked for a small business here in Chicago. When I started it was only me and the owner. The business was due diligence for this multi-billion dollar corporation. It was conducting legal research. I know sounds ambigious right? I'd spend hours sifting through databases and papers looking for federal tax liens, unsatisfied judgments, or pending lawsuits. Upon starting the job, I couldn't help but wonder, "How the hell did my boss wind up with this company?". It was such a random industry for someone to branch off into. Nobody just wakes up one day and says "Gee I really want to break into the due diligence sector".

After about a month, I finally pulled up the courage to ask. Here's what I found: He had lost his former job and was down on his luck. He was in that soft space between employed and unemployed. Which in reality means he was unemployed and opportunities we’re sparse. He had an old friend phone him one day to invite him to a cocktail party. Seeing as he had nothing else to do, he agreed to show up. Standing there at the party, in his awkward fashion, he struck up a conversation with the woman next to him. “Hello”. They started chatting, and to his surprise, she knew of a gap in her former industry that urgently needed filling. Nobody was providing due diligence in Cook County IL. If he was interested, she could get him in touch with a former co-worker to see if he could potentially be that gap-filler. What started as a single-person, single-county outfit, has now grown into a 20-person, fully-national business, netting millions a year. All from a little hello.

From Hello All The Way To True Love

While working that same job I was regularly making trips to the courthouse to retrieve documents. It got to the point where I would be showing up two to three times a day. Now if we're being real, the Cook County Courthouse is not necessarily a place filled with model-grade lookers. So when a beautiful girl just so happens to be there, she's easily getting noticed. I had seen this same girl on three seperate occasions, always laughing and smiling, emitting this warm glow of energy.


She disappeared for a short period of time, maybe two weeks, and I found myself disappointed. I was for the first time actually excited to go to the courthouse because I knew there was this 1% chance of me running into her. Time continued to slowly pass and with it went my hopes of seeing her again. Then one day, there she was. I dug deep down into my empty bag of courage and scraped up what little bits I had, walked up to her, and said "Hello". Fast forward ten years later and we are now happily married. I can't even imagine my life otherwise, but I know that had I not uttered that single word, I would be a completely different person living a completely different life. The trajectory of my life was rerouted from that one word.

“Hello”.

Minimal Social Interactions Increase Happiness

Our days are filled with tiny insignificant moments. Waiting for the bus, opening the door for someone, locking eyes with a passerby on the street...Don’t be afraid to strike up a conversation with a stranger. A recent study from the University of Sussex, took a closer look at how minimal social interactions, or brief interactions with strangers, can significantly enhance one's quality of life. They sampled from 60,000 individuals, and found that these small interactions can cumulatively add up to a better sense of belonging and an increased sense of happiness. A smile and a "hello" takes little to no effort and can go a long way. Sometimes it's enough to make someone's day. We share in this world and life together and these miniscule interactions can make us feel a part of something bigger.

Getting Back Offline

I know what you're thinking, there's irony in me talking about getting back offline amidst you reading this online. But there is actual merit here. Gen Zers haven't experienced the dating world without apps. They don't know that it's perfectly okay to meet someone organically by simply "being out". The digital world we live in is supposed to be connecting us and bringing us closer together, when in fact it's doing quite the opposite, seperating us and driving physical space between us. You don't get on the bus and head to the weekly meet up for your book club...why? Because you can just conduct the same meetup online. You don't need to go out to simply be out of the house because the internet is a great substitute that allows you to explore the world from behind a screen. Say "hello", take the chance, the worst they can say is nothing back.