Sidewalk strangers

A Post a Day in May 18/31 

All our friends start out as strangers to us, though not all strangers become our friends, of course. However, we can be on friendly terms with some strangers in certain ways that make them a player of sorts in our life.

For many years, I walked to work. Along the way, close to the office, I would routinely cross paths with a woman walking away from the building. Over the course of several years, we always acknowledged each other with a smile, but never stopped to chat or connect. If she was absent on my commute, I noticed it and I missed the passing connection we had established. We were on, what legendary urban planner Jane Jacobs calls, ‘sidewalk terms’.

Jacobs characterizes such connections between individuals as being without “unwelcome entanglements, without boredom, necessity for excuses, explanations, fears of giving offence, embarrassments respecting impositions or commitments and all such paraphernalia of obligations, which accompany less limited relationships. It is possible to be on excellent sidewalk terms with people who are very different from oneself.” [The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs/1961]

My connection with the walking-to-work woman could not be stretched to be described as a relationship, but, for a good long while, she was definitely a character in my workday. When I think of that job and the routine of walking to that office for all that time, that woman features in the memory.

Strangers are all around us, populating the background of our lives. Some we talk to, others we avoid. Those who move into the foreground with, and for us, become known to us with names and personalities, and we come to call them acquaintances, or maybe friends. But even those who don’t make it past ‘sidewalk terms’ with us are not immaterial to us. Whether we pass these strangers every day while walking our dog, or we chat with them while our kids are on the swings at the local playground, or we bump into them every week at the grocery store, these people are touch-points for us, colouring the rhythms and routines of our days. We may never know their names, but we look for them and we see them — and they us — in ways that both show, and nurture, our humanity.

Strangers: We can move towards them through conversation and connection, or we can keep our distance. Regardless, how we choose to interact with strangers shapes our immediate world and builds the community in which we live our days. It starts with eye contact, may move beyond sidewalk terms to small talk and then to conversation that, in turn, can lead to friendship. How we navigate that journey of interpersonal discovery is up to each of us.  

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.