Whenever I tell a story about the apartment buildings I’ve lived in, it usually involves my neighbours. The girl with the three-legged dog, the loud upstairs neighbour with sorrels or Christin and her cat, Meep. I don’t necessarily know each of these people, but they are quintessential characters, not only to my stories but to my community. If I didn’t hear or see them after a few days, I would begin to worry and check in on them, as I’m sure they would do for me.

When I first moved out on my own, I had the phone numbers of half of my neighbours within the first year of living there. Whenever I shared that information with friends, they would think it was strange, but it helped me feel safe and like I wasn’t completely on my own. That if something were to go wrong, I had people to turn to in an emergency, which I did.

For example, the time I woke up to someone trying to get into my unit. I immediately texted the upstairs neighbours to see if they could see what was going on, which they did, and suddenly, I felt a lot safer. This sense of familiarity added to my experience of being on my own for the first time, making it a lot easier than if I hadn’t had these people looking out for me. Why is it, then, that this concept seems so strange or a rarity to others? Are people no longer getting to know their neighbours?

In the podcast How to Talk to People, they discuss how “efficiency is the enemy of social life” and how we currently live our lives by prioritizing efficiency, which doesn’t provide much opportunity for us to slow down and strike up spontaneous conversation. We are always hyper-focused on getting to the next place, getting in and out of the store or grabbing a coffee or bite on the go.

We go from point A to point B without pausing anywhere unless it’s convenient to chain our task-related stops together. We rarely stop and linger anymore. Self-serve checkouts have eliminated the classic grocery line conversation to pass the time.

People are constantly on their phones when on public transportation. Or they pretend to scroll on their phone when waiting to meet a friend in a public space in order to avoid the feeling of awkwardness that is lingering with no “purpose.”

In doing so, we are immediately closing ourselves off from the people that surround us. We no longer strike up conversations with people in the coffee shop line, or chat with the strangers that take the same bus as us on our commute each day.

Is this lack of familiarity with strangers causing us to lose our sense of community?

Is this a skill that we are losing due to prioritizing social connections online? Perhaps spontaneous conversation is a lost art, or perhaps our way of life and how we use space today doesn’t allow for it. However, I strongly believe it adds a certain level of enjoyment and connection when sharing experiences with those around you, whether you know them personally or not.

With that, I challenge you to strike up a conversation with a stranger today. It can be very brief. Ask someone how they styled their hair, or share a joke about cats being picky eaters in the cat food aisle. These are just some examples of my favourite recent encounters with strangers. It adds to your day, to theirs and most importantly, it adds to our collective sense of community.

Strike up a conversation today, slow down, linger and talk to your neighbours!