How to meet any other?

 Many of you have asked, on many different occasions, how I go about meeting new people. Or strangers. The good kind.

It’s something, I have to confess, I’m good at. I could be all coy and say that necessity has forced me to hone this ability (I wander the world alone and have to find ways to connect with the beat of life somehow). But I’ve been like it all my life. As a kid I would get in trouble at church when I’d turn around and seek eye contact with the people sitting behind me. I’d befriend kids in parks and adults at supermarkets. I’ve always been socially awkward and I didn’t have many real friends when I was younger. Just humans I made eye contact with and could ask questions of.

I’m not sure how to write a guide as such, other than to perhaps tap out a bunch of mindsets and philosophical approaches that guide me. And illustrate with some examples of recent meet-ups, both romantic and serendipitous, that I’ve had here in Paris.

And then hope they land with you helpfully.

Do eye contact

Really, this is my number one tip. Looking at people fully is the artful edge of meeting strangers. It’s the practice. I like to look up from the street (and my phone) and into people’s faces and have long landed in trouble for it (see church tale above). In Anglo and Scandi countries it doesn’t go down so well. But in Latin-based joints it does.