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The Stranger Is Somebody’s Person · Infinite Threads with Bob Barnett

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  [music]
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: to Infinite Threads.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Bob.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yesterday, We talked about the things that people carry that we cannot see.
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  SPEAKER_00: Today, I want to take that idea a step further.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes we don't know enough about another person even
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  SPEAKER_00: to wonder what they're carrying.
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  SPEAKER_00: They're simply a stranger.
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  SPEAKER_00: A face at another table.
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  SPEAKER_00: Or they're someone passing us in a parking lot.
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  SPEAKER_00: Or a person we see for three seconds at a stoplight and probably never see again.
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  SPEAKER_00: There are thousands of people like that in our lives.
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  SPEAKER_00: They move through our field of vision and then they're gone.
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  SPEAKER_00: But I want to remember something about every one of them.
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  SPEAKER_00: That stranger, that stranger that you're looking at is somebody's person.
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  SPEAKER_00: Somewhere, there may be someone who knows exactly how that person takes their coffee.
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  SPEAKER_00: Somebody knows what makes them laugh.
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  SPEAKER_00: Somebody would recognize their footsteps coming down the hall, probably.
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  SPEAKER_00: We don't know any of that, honestly.
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  SPEAKER_00: We just see a stranger.
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  SPEAKER_00: And you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: I think that difference matters because human beings behave differently
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  SPEAKER_00: toward people who feel real to us.
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  SPEAKER_00: If somebody we love is late getting home, well, what do we do?
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  SPEAKER_00: We worry.
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  SPEAKER_00: If a stranger is driving slowly in front of us,
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  SPEAKER_00: that happens all the time with me, we may simply get irritated.
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  SPEAKER_00: If our friend sings
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  SPEAKER_00: When a stranger seems distracted, we might decide that they're rude.
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  SPEAKER_00: The behavior can look almost identical.
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  SPEAKER_00: What changes is our relationship to the person.
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  SPEAKER_00: When we know somebody, we automatically give them a larger story.
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  SPEAKER_00: Strangers usually don't get that advantage.
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  SPEAKER_00: They arrive in our lives without context.
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  SPEAKER_00: So we make context for them.
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  SPEAKER_00: Our minds are good at that.
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  SPEAKER_00: A person cuts us off in traffic, and suddenly we know everything about their characters.
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  SPEAKER_00: Apparently,
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  SPEAKER_00: four seconds at an intersection is enough information to complete
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  SPEAKER_00: an entire psychological profile, or at least that's what we think at those moments.
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  SPEAKER_00: We don't know if they're careless.
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  SPEAKER_00: We don't know if they're lost.
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  SPEAKER_00: We don't actually know if somebody in the backseat just said, I think I'm going to be sick.
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  SPEAKER_00: We only know that they got in our way.
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  SPEAKER_00: And for that moment, They exist mainly as an inconvenience in our story.
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  SPEAKER_00: I think we all do this to an extent.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's almost unavoidable.
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  SPEAKER_00: There's too many people around us to imagine the full life of every person that we pass.
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  SPEAKER_00: But every now and then, I think it's healthy to interrupt that automatic thinking and remember.
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  SPEAKER_00: This person belongs somewhere.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not as property, obviously.
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  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they belong in somebody's heart.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they're somebody's mother.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe there's a friend who has known them since grade school.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe somebody lights up when their name appears on the phone.
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  SPEAKER_00: That changes the picture, doesn't it?
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  SPEAKER_00: At least it should.
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  SPEAKER_00: I've noticed something similar when we hear about tragedies.
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  SPEAKER_00: A number can be difficult to comprehend.
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  SPEAKER_00: Ten people, a hundred people, thousands.
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  SPEAKER_00: The larger the number becomes, the harder it can be for the human mind to really feel it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then we hear one story or we see a photograph.
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  SPEAKER_00: We learned that one person Always called their daughter on Sunday afternoon.
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  SPEAKER_00: Or that they had a ridiculous laugh that everyone loved.
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  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly, the number becomes human.
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  SPEAKER_00: Nothing about the event changed.
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  SPEAKER_00: But our relationship to the people inside it did.
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  SPEAKER_00: That, that is why names and stories matter.
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  SPEAKER_00: They pull people back out of categories.
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  SPEAKER_00: And categories can become dangerous when they're all, all we see.
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  SPEAKER_00: We've been talking this week about how easily people become labels.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it happens in disagreement and sometimes it happens simply
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  SPEAKER_00: because someone is far away from us.
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  SPEAKER_00: They become the homeless,
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  SPEAKER_00: the elderly,
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  SPEAKER_00: immigrants, Rich people, poor people, whatever, whatever the category happens to be.
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  SPEAKER_00: Categories can be useful for understanding large problems.
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  SPEAKER_00: But no, not one, no human being actually wakes up in the morning feeling like a category.
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  SPEAKER_00: They wake up as themselves.
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  SPEAKER_00: You know, they have a backache.
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  SPEAKER_00: They wonder what to eat.
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  SPEAKER_00: They worry about somebody that they love.
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  SPEAKER_00: That, that is the level where life is actually lived.
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  SPEAKER_00: And you know that by yourself and how you are.
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  SPEAKER_00: And when we forget that,
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  SPEAKER_00: it becomes easier to talk about people in ways that we would never talk
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  SPEAKER_00: about someone whose kitchen table we had sat around.
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  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean that we have to pretend that everybody is wonderful by any means.
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  SPEAKER_00: Strangers can hurt people.
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  SPEAKER_00: They can lie.
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  SPEAKER_00: They can behave terribly.
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  SPEAKER_00: Being someone's person does not make somebody harmless.
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  SPEAKER_00: But even then, their humanity remains relevant.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's been a recurring idea on Infinite Threads.
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  SPEAKER_00: We can protect people without dehumanizing anybody.
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  SPEAKER_00: We really can, guys.
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  SPEAKER_00: It just takes rewiring.
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  SPEAKER_00: We can have accountability without pretending that a human life somehow disappeared
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  SPEAKER_00: because that person caused harm.
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  SPEAKER_00: In fact, understanding the person may help us understand the harm better.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's how we learn.
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  SPEAKER_00: That is how we prevent things.
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  SPEAKER_00: And in ordinary life, the stakes usually aren't nearly that dramatic.
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  SPEAKER_00: Most strangers that we encounter are simply trying to get through the same day that we are.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's where this idea becomes practical.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe somebody makes a mistake.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they're moving slowly.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they say something awkward.
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  SPEAKER_00: We don't have to turn every minor annoyance into a moral verdict.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes a person is just having a bad moment.
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  SPEAKER_00: We know that we have them.
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  SPEAKER_00: There's where you gotta look, guys.
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  SPEAKER_00: What could make me do that?
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  SPEAKER_00: We just tend to understand our own better because we know the backstory.
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  SPEAKER_00: When I lose patience, I know that I've been tired all day.
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  SPEAKER_00: When somebody else loses patience, I may just think, what's wrong with that guy?
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's an interesting double standard.
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  SPEAKER_00: Our own behavior comes with footnotes.
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  SPEAKER_00: Everybody else's comes with a headline.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe empathy begins by remembering that strangers have footnotes too.
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  SPEAKER_00: We may never get to read them in our whole lives.
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  SPEAKER_00: But they exist.
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  SPEAKER_00: I think about this especially in public places.
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  SPEAKER_00: You know, like airports, hospitals, grocery stores.
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  SPEAKER_00: Places where people with completely different lives briefly share the same space.
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  SPEAKER_00: Someone over there is leaving for vacation.
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  SPEAKER_00: Someone else may be traveling because a parent is sick.
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  SPEAKER_00: Another person may be going home after years away.
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  SPEAKER_00: We could all be standing in the same line and living completely different moments.
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  SPEAKER_00: In fact, most of the time we are.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that fascinates me.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because from the outside, it's just a line.
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  SPEAKER_00: But from the inside, there are dozens of stories standing together.
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  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes those stories
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  SPEAKER_00: A stranger holds a door.
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  SPEAKER_00: Someone helps pick up something that another person dropped.
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  SPEAKER_00: Two people joke about how long the line is.
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  SPEAKER_00: And for 30 seconds, lives that would otherwise never intersect become part of one another's day.
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  SPEAKER_00: Most of those moments disappear, but not always.
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  SPEAKER_00: We've
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  SPEAKER_00: probably all remembered something kind that a stranger once did for us.
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  SPEAKER_00: We may not know their name.
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  SPEAKER_00: They may not remember us at all.
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  SPEAKER_00: But still, the moment stayed with us.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that tells me something about how hungry human beings are for recognition.
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  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't take much to remind someone that they're not invisible.
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  SPEAKER_00: And again, this is not about performing kindness.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's about perspective.
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  SPEAKER_00: The person standing in front of us has people.
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  SPEAKER_00: They have history.
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  SPEAKER_00: They have a place where their absence would be noticed.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that last one, that really stays with me.
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  SPEAKER_00: If I disappeared from somebody's life, There are people who would know.
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  SPEAKER_00: The same is true of the stranger walking past us.
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  SPEAKER_00: Somebody would notice if that chair was suddenly empty.
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  SPEAKER_00: Somebody would miss the voice.
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  SPEAKER_00: Somebody would reach for the phone and remember that they could no longer call.
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  SPEAKER_00: That gives human life, I think, a different weight.
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  SPEAKER_00: It makes it harder to think of people as disposable.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I think we need that reminder,
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  SPEAKER_00: especially when so much of our interaction with other people now happens at
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  SPEAKER_00: a distance.
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  SPEAKER_00: Online, we often see a profile picture and a sentence.
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  SPEAKER_00: That may be all.
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  SPEAKER_00: There's no voice, no expression, no kitchen table.
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  SPEAKER_00: Just words on a screen.
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  SPEAKER_00: It becomes easy to respond to the words while forgetting the person.
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  SPEAKER_00: But somebody is sitting on the other side of that screen.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they're wrong.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we are.
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  SPEAKER_00: Either way, there's still a human being there.
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  SPEAKER_00: And somewhere, somebody knows them in a way that we don't.
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  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean that we have to engage with every stranger gently, no matter what they do.
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  SPEAKER_00: It means that we try to forget who we,
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  SPEAKER_00: it means that we try not to forget who we are engaging with.
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  SPEAKER_00: A person, not an avatar, not a category, not an obstacle, a person.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's one of the human things that I'd like to protect.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yesterday, guys, we talked about invisible burdens.
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  SPEAKER_00: Today, I want to add invisible relationships.
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  SPEAKER_00: Every stranger is surrounded by connections that we can't see.
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  SPEAKER_00: Threads going back through their life.
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  SPEAKER_00: Parents, friends, children...
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  SPEAKER_00: People who taught them things.
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  SPEAKER_00: People that they miss.
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  SPEAKER_00: People who miss them.
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  SPEAKER_00: We walk through those invisible webs
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  SPEAKER_00: every day without knowing that they're there.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's one reason that I've always liked the image of Infinite Threads.
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  SPEAKER_00: We see separate people.
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  SPEAKER_00: But every person is connected to other people.
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  SPEAKER_00: And those people, well, they're connected to others.
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  SPEAKER_00: The stranger's not standing alone.
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  SPEAKER_00: They are an intersection in a much larger weave.
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  SPEAKER_00: I think that's beautiful.
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  SPEAKER_00: I really do.
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  SPEAKER_00: Tomorrow, guys, we're going to talk about something that moves through those threads.
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  SPEAKER_00: What we refuse to pass on.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because anger can move from person to person, and so can fear.
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  SPEAKER_00: And at some point,
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  SPEAKER_00: somebody has to decide whether the thing that reached them deserves
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  SPEAKER_00: to keep traveling.
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  SPEAKER_00: We've talked about that many times recently.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it may seem too recent for you all, but I'm having to hammer it.
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  SPEAKER_00: But for today, maybe we can look at the next unfamiliar face a little different.
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  SPEAKER_00: We don't need to know their story.
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  SPEAKER_00: We don't have to invent one.
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  SPEAKER_00: Just remember there is one.
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  SPEAKER_00: That stranger is somebody's person.
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  SPEAKER_00: Remember that.
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  SPEAKER_00: And if we remember that often enough,
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  SPEAKER_00: maybe the world becomes a little harder to divide into people who matter and people
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  SPEAKER_00: who don't.
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  SPEAKER_00: We sure do that a lot because it's just so easy.
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  SPEAKER_00: Stop it.
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  SPEAKER_00: We're all related.
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  SPEAKER_00: I love you all very, very, very much.
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  SPEAKER_00: And you know what I need you to do, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm out there and pass that on, okay?
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  SPEAKER_00: Later, Gators.
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  SPEAKER_00: Bye-bye.
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  [music]