The other day, on my morning walk, I smiled at a woman powering past in activewear. She looked confused, as if she was an alien learning to human via student exchange. “Morning!” I said, further raising the stakes. Her confusion turned to mild alarm, and she powered on. I imagined her thinking, “Why is this woman in her $12 nylon tights trying to initiate social contact? Is this a scam?”
These school holidays, I’m at my parents’ house on Sydney’s upper north shore, and I’m starting to understand my regionally bred husband’s gripes about “city folk” and their “unfriendly” ways. When I first moved to our coastal town eight years ago, the excessive friendliness felt foreign to me. We’d be driving around the neighbourhood, and my husband would wave at passing cars and pedestrians. “Do you know them?” I’d ask. He would shrug. No, he didn’t, it’s just what you do around here.
On foot, there would be “g’days” and “great-day-for-its”. Perhaps even a chat about the epic swell at the beach.
I completely understand the impulse to be suspicious of smiling strangers; my small-town Kiwi mum was a serial stranger-engager, and I hated it. As a kid, I could see it in her eyes at the supermarket like a predator – locking onto an elderly woman manhandling the avocados. A conversation would begin while I quietly tried to slip a Snickers bar into the trolley. This was not standard city behaviour.
As I would explain to my husband, city suburbs are so busy that you could give yourself a jaw RSI from smiling at the hundreds of people you pass each day.
In the city, making eye contact with people is a bold lifestyle choice, but in our beach town, not waving at someone is basically an act of war.
But it wasn’t until COVID-19 hit, and I was sentenced to pacing up and down the coastline for exactly 60 minutes a day, like a low-risk inmate, pram in hand, that I truly understood the power of friendly strangers. Juggling post-natal delirium and a worldwide crisis, I was desperate for human connection. My “Morning!” was loaded with a plea: Please talk to me about something, anything, before my brain turns to pureed baby food and I start referring to myself in third person.
I became an expert in small talk, targeting unsuspecting teens at the supermarket checkout. “How’s your day been? Has it been busy? What’s your favourite subject at school? Where do you see yourself in five years? Strengths? Weaknesses?” Like an unqualified careers adviser with no personal boundaries.
Since discovering the power of an unexpected smile and “hello”, I aggressively weaponise it in my one-woman mission to make friendliness great again. A smile costs nothing, but it does come with an unspoken contract to acknowledge my existence.
My hit rate for receiving random smiles in my parents’ neighbourhood is not great, but I persist, even when the rare “hellos” sound more like a security check than a greeting, or I get the dead-eyed stare of someone silently calculating whether I’m about to ask them for money.
As the world spins rapidly into algorithmic oblivion, it’s never been easier to disappear into our individually curated realities, plugging into podcasts or audiobooks, eyes down, interaction optional. But as the late author David Foster Wallace put it, the quality of our attention is what shapes our world. That even the most ordinary moments, like the morning walk, can be “on fire with the same force that made the stars”.
So I’ve taken it upon myself to direct my attention to the unsuspecting early morning power walkers, whether they like it or not. Consider it a small act of resistance. Sure, you may not have had your first coffee of the day, or your beloved pooch just got taken out by a rogue e-bike – but I’m going to say it anyway. “Morning!” Don’t make this weird.
Cherie Gilmour is a freelance writer.
Get a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up for our Opinion newsletter.
