In praise of being a stranger

I like to be a stranger to the places I live in.

By stranger, I don’t mean to refer to external facts like how long you lived in a palace or your residence permit. I mean an internal posture, a way of relating to the world around you. I mean choosing to be a stranger rather than a familiar; a visitor rather than a resident.

This is an exploration of what I think is so praiseworthy about it.

I haven’t much seen people voice praise for being a stranger. In fact, I believe most people consider strangeness as something undesirable, and overcoming it an achievement. Since I have a lot of praise for being a stranger, I want to share some of my musings.

This is not meant as unambiguous endorsement, nor an attempt to convince anyone. It’s rather an invitation, of sorts, to lean into a perspective - maybe different from the perspective you take usually - on what it could be like to relate to the world around you as a stranger.

Seeing

I can see places that I have no personal business with - places I’m a friendly stranger to - in ways it’s harder for me to see places that my identity is entangled with. This is a way of looking that I am hungry for.

As a stranger, I am a bit like a scientist, a dispassionate observer: the place’s flaws and mistakes don’t offend me as much. Its virtues, too, shine more purely. This isn’t about suspending my ability to make judgements about what I think is good or bad, or what I endorse or don’t. It’s about protecting my ability to look.

The virtues and flaws, in the clarity in which they present themselves to me, become windows through which I catch glimpses of reality.

Is this just about novelty? I think not. From the first to the last day I kept finding awe and perspective in Davos’ mountains; I kept savouring the humid, heavy, sultry scent of the Beiruti air; I kept connecting to calm and clarity in the ocean waves of El Medano; the beauty of gazing upon the Swiss midlands from high up the mountain top never fades.

Yes, novelty is powerful in helping us get glimpses of beauty. But powerful, too, is the skill of re-seeing and re-discovering which we can cultivate.

What Hayao Miyazaki - Studio Ghibli - does in his movies is equivalent to what I call being a stranger. Miyazaki helps us see, through the eyes of his protagonists, the enchanted nature of his fictional worlds. He sometimes directs our attention at vastness and mightiness, and sometimes at smallness and inconspicuousness. Wonder and a sense for the rawness of reality can be found in any of these places.

Relating

There is something about relating to - and as - a stranger that is pure, and unaffected by mental constructs of identity.

A lot of people “stand for” things: ideas, roles, communities, places. And a lot of interactions happen between people who all “stand for” something. Or more accurately, those interactions happen between the things they stand for, not between the people themselves.

To me, this way of relating often feels fake, impoverished and confused. If someone addresses me as whatever the thing is they stand for, I might exchange words with them; pre-cashed, usually polite yet ultimately rather empty words. And I’d feel a sense of disgust - not at them - but at the fakeness of our interaction and the nothingness between us.

The thing is, I don’t think I know how to be in a relationship with anything that is not a person.

Relatedly, living in a place where people know me - or believe to know me; where they have conceptions of who I am - makes it such that I can end up feeling marshalled into “standing for” something myself. This makes me feel caged; imposed upon me an identity or role I never wanted, or don’t want anymore.

The beauty of meeting a stranger, in a place I’ve nothing to do with - the beauty of meeting someone distant from me in a plethora of ways - is that it bears the potential of completely stripping away all mental constructs. Into this nothingness, a mere smile can birth a connection between two personhoods.

I used to be surprised - though I no longer am - by how the genuine act of looking at someone, of actually and merely looking, can have a profound impact on them and me.

There is a human bond that can exist between two strangers - despite, across and beyond the distance of ignorance about each other’s lives, of language, culture, lifestyles. A bond created by not more than a simple smile unleashed into silence; a bond nearly ephemeral, yet deeply real.

This bond is among the strongest types of connection I have felt. Its depth and richness, I believe, come as much from the connection between two people, as from connecting to our shared humanity. A richness that is accessed by looking - unafraid, unashamed and truthfully.

The woman that smiled back at me in the streets of Ashrafieh, on my way to university, as if she saw something in me that day, that I couldn’t. The waiter at the café I used to go to in order to lose myself in thought, asking me how I was doing, causing me to snap out of my inner world, and, in the reflection of my surprise, creating a moment of genuine encounter. The old grape farmer in the hot valley in Turpan, with whom I couldn’t exchange a single word, but whose eyes held all the stories.

I used to be astonished - though I no longer am - by just how easy it is to love someone. How easy it is to love a stranger.

Practice

Being a stranger, to me, is an invitation to freedom and truthfulness. When I'm relating to the world around me as a stranger, I can see it more clearly. Or more precisely, it is easier to access this clear seeing. This way of looking is extremely precious to me and I would (indeed do, arguably) pay a lot for protecting and cultivating it. And so I tend to make myself a visitor, rather than a resident, of the places I am in.

I don’t mean to say that relating as a stranger is the only way to see clearly and truthfully. Far from. It’s a mental posture that resonates with me, and won’t for others. It’s a mental posture that is useful to me today, and might cease to be in the future.

Being a stranger is the training regime, rather than the state I aspire to. What I practice is a certain way of seeing and relating to the world. Being a stranger is like a crutch I use to walk. What I aspire to is to dance.

I haven’t addressed what might come as a cost from being a stranger. I understand and acknowledge that such costs exist, even if, at this point in my life, I am welcoming them readily and smilingly.

There is another piece of writing that would naturally go here, alongside these thoughts on being a stranger. That piece is about being alone, of being with oneself. I have praise for that, too. I might write that piece, some other day.

***

There is a sense in which we are and will always be strangers. The act of pretending we’re not is also the act of inviting a veil of fog being lowered over whatever it is that allows you to see clearly. We want to pretend we are not strangers because we fear an eternity of solitude; we fear being cut off, never quite let in, never quite being part of the circle of true familiars. This fear, I believe, is an illusion - like many of its kind. Stopping the pretence is the act of sinking into strangeness, fully and unafraid, in a way that opens, rather than closes, the world to us.