Questions to Ask a Stranger

Beyond "What do you do, then?"

“How are you?” is not always an easy question to answer, but it is generally on the kind side of inquisitive, and I usually welcome the inquiry when people I know ask me.

But it would feel odd if a random person sitting next to me on the tube turned and asked the same question. We tend not to ask strangers, “How are you?” because it seems like jumping the gun. We have been encultured into wanting to know who somebody is long before knowing how they are.

And yet we also cannot just ask “who are you?” without feeling rude. It’s as if we have an invisible code that would respond: “Who am I? - Who are you to ask me that?”

So we often prefer not to ask, and life in big cities is only possible because of the kindness of anonymity, the license not to talk, the expectation not to be questioned. Averting eye contact and keeping relatively quiet seem anti-social, but in a deeper sense, it is pro-social. If everyone had to account for themselves to everyone else in the presence of everyone else, we would quickly be overwhelmed.

And so it goes in cities, strangers are aware of each other, but we tend not to talk to each other. The who question is too direct, so we don’t ask. And the how question is overfamiliar, so we can’t ask.

And so, at least in most anglophone countries, when we feel moved to connect in a social context like a party, or a conference, we typically start with the what question, which is a social convention, but not entirely innocent.

Unless you have an easy answer ready to the question - What do you do? - and I never have - it feels like a request to inform a judgment of status and network utility value. The truth of the answer requires a whole conversation, but people are generally just looking for a familiar category to slot you into. If I know what you do for money, the idea goes, I have some idea who you are, and soon, perhaps the next time I see you, I can even ask how you are (!).

But it’s not so simple. Because we can’t all be doctors, lawyers, teachers, waiters, lion tamers, or one of the legions who ‘work in finance’ or ‘work in IT’.

(Nor do we all have the wit of the poet David Whyte, who responded to an immigration officer posing that familiar question - “What do you do, then?” with: “I work on the conversational nature of reality”. The officer leaned over the desk conspiratorially and said: I needed you last night…)

Who or what do you care for? is a much better question, proposed by Madeleine Bunting. And yet, in our liberal culture where personal achievement and self-care are still valorised, it might seem tacitly judgmental or competitive. If the person speaking before you says they care for the Amazon rainforest and their fifty grandchildren, you might feel ashamed if you only care for your shoe collection or a goldfish. Some would say that’s the whole point - to shift the dial towards an expectation of caring, that a larger life means a kind of expansive caring. Maybe. But we need to fight for the freedom not to care, because care ceases to be meaningful when it is coercive, or applied too generally or generically. For care to be meaningful, it helps if it is voluntary and specific.

We might also try: What was the best part of your day so far?

That’s a sweet question, and it is helpful to be brought back to the blessings of life, big and small. I believe all days have highlights if you know how to look for them, even if they seem trivial at the time. For instance, there was a moment yesterday when my wife Siva wanted a coffee, which she takes white and hot but not as strong as me. I made the espresso, added some boiled water, then noticed we had run out of milk. I considered drinking it myself before going to the nearby shop to buy milk, before making another coffee. Then I noticed on the dinner table the bottle of squirty cream I had bought for my son Vishnu(9), and decided to mix some into the coffee to create a literal crema -it looked delicious. The specificity of such moments helps us to connect, and is part of Carl Rogers’s dictum that what is most personal is most universal.

But I think we can do even better.

What is your world?

Now there’s a great question, and I heard it first via equestrian Damien Hallam at The Realisation festival. Your world can include what you do, who or what you care for, and even allows you to say how you are and what you’ve recently been up to. It is an expansive invitation to share whatever feels most worth sharing. The query recognises that we are not just job titles, or ages, or genders, or races, but each of us carries a unique subjective imprint in the fabric of reality. The invocation of ‘world’ invites all aspects of us - past and present, projects and purposes, responsibilities and rituals, rather than just our profession.

There is some depth here, too, in the idea of worlding, which Donna Haraway is keen to highlight.

“It matters what matters we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts, what descriptions describe descriptions, what ties tie ties. It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories.”
― Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble

Our question to a stranger is a kind of tie that ties ties, a kind of story that makes the world, and a world that makes stories.

There is no formula here. The right thing to say is always a matter of context and sensibility, and even great questions become depotentiated from over-use.

Still, I wanted to let you know that by my current reckoning, the questions I am inclined to ask strangers are:

What is your world? And what’s the best thing that has happened to you today so far?

So, dear reader,

What is your world?

And what’s the best thing that’s happened to you today so far?