Questions to Ask a Stranger

“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 ...