Last summer I finally broke down and bought a pair of noise cancelling earbuds. My father had hearing problems late in life so as I’ve grown older, I thought the active noise cancellation could help protect my hearing a bit while I’m mowing the lawn or blowing snow. When you put them in your ears and turn them on, it’s as if the entire outside world has gone silent. Even standing next to a noisy lawn mower, you only hear a muffled rumble.
My wife accuses me of being a techno-junky because I love new technology gadgets, most of which eventually turn out to be junk that sits on the shelf. Yet despite the fact that noise cancelling earbuds really do live up to the hype, for years I deliberately resisted purchasing them out of a fear of how they might diminish my life. Indeed, now that I own a pair, it’s been proven true.
I stayed in Downtown Chicago for a few days last month. I was there on Community Foundation business so I was travelling alone. After a day filled with meetings, I thought I would sit in a coffee shop for a bit, wander along Michigan Avenue, then grab a bite for dinner. Now that I have these fancy new earbuds, I decided to use them to keep me company. The noise cancelling earbuds did their job exactly as promised. Even though I was surrounded by people everywhere I went along Chicago’s crowded Magnificent Mile, I sat in absolute silence at the coffee shop listening to a podcast, quietly meandering in and out of stores listening to music, and eating dinner alone in perfect isolation as I streamed the latest news. Everywhere I went I was surrounded by people, yet I managed to spend that entire evening avoiding any semblance of a human connection.
Without these earbuds, I’ve had people at coffee shops offer a casual word to me about a book I was holding, how pretty the leaves were outside, or inquire about a good place for dinner. When I’ve meandered through stores in the past, I’ve had people approach to say that I’d look good in an outfit I had just pulled off the rack. Once a friendly person wisely suggested that I should put a particular shirt back on the rack as quickly as possible. When alone at dinner I’ve had a kind wait staff engage in longer conversations with me. On occasion, I even had a nice chats with other diners who were also sitting alone at neighboring tables. Wearing the noise cancelled earbuds that evening in Chicago stole all these opportunities from me.
When we have positive interactions with strangers, or people we barely know, we are reaffirming for ourselves and to each other that most folks are decent, love their families, and are trying to do what is right. In other words, most folks are a lot like us.
I worry we’re losing these opportunities to build bonds when we forego chances to connect strangers. It’s easy to trust people whom we know or are similar to us. Yet our entire society depends upon the social contract that exists between people who are strangers and often have little in common. Traffic only flows if I trust that the person who is driving on the other side of the road is going to obey the same traffic laws that I do. Restaurants only work if I’m confident that the chef will take sufficient care to prepare my food safely. Our entire economy is based on the belief that the banker will account for my deposits honestly.
Someone smarter than me once referred to this as the enormous power of weak bonds. These positive everyday interactions we have with strangers individually don’t do much for society, but taken together, they form the enormously powerful foundation of trust upon which we have built a single nation.
If trust is finally lost, if the social contract we have with each other is broken, our society will ultimately fail. Goodness knows that I’m not suggesting that there will be an inevitable collapse of American society because of noise cancelling earbuds. However, the continued success of our country rests upon our willingness to interact and engage with those who are different from us. I remain absolutely confident that we still have far more in common as a people than our politics would have us believe. Yet it’s easy to forget that if we don’t engage with strangers.
This column by Bret Bicoy originally appeared in the Peninsula Pulse on October 4, 2022.
Bicoy Philanthropic Advisors 