‘Micro-bravery’ a step toward better understanding

Opinion

Advice Guy lives somewhere around here. He’s older, tall and thin, with greying hair. He approaches the unwitting and stands too close. Advice Guy then does what Advice Guy does best: he dispenses pearls of wisdom and unasked-for thoughts. If he noticed something new about you or your property, or just experienced something that he feels would benefit you to know about, he’ll set upon you with anecdotes and pointers, oblivious to your availability, consent or need for them. In a lot of ways, I’m a bit envious. I love a good conversation, but am wary of endeavouring one with a stranger.

How freeing it must be, to move through the world with the assumption everyone is poised for friendship, that we are only a few pleasantries away from making one another’s lives better for the interaction. How glorious to have only positive assumptions about how we’ll be received, how luxurious to assume everyone has time for our thoughts and stories.

I thought of Advice Guy when reading a Canadian Press article this week headlined, The big meaning behind micro-relationships. Because despite 15 years of encounters with Advice Guy, I don’t know his real name.

Living in a neighbourhood with a low rate of car ownership and many homes and apartments lacking air conditioning means people are outside a lot — walking on sidewalks, waiting for buses, lounging in parks, smoking on porches and balconies. I should be a poster child for the kinds of relationships and encounters detailed in the article, but I’m not.

Despite being a pretty friendly person, I’m also quite shy. I’m envious of my officemate who is brave enough to eat his lunch among the newsroom reporters. In the evenings, I bring my work with me to keep myself occupied during my kids’ dance lessons or karate classes, jealous but paralyzed by the sight of other parents striking up conversations and friendships. I read a lot; the conversations between characters and comments perhaps replacing the real-life interactions of daily living.

It’s in the comment sections and commentary that I realize I’m part of the problem being discussed here this week. The polarizing viewpoints and lack of positive presuppositions drive us into silence instead of sharing. The overwhelming rhetoric around the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk is pitting perspectives against one another: words or violence? Right or left? Debate or provocation? Free speech or hate speech?

As the dust has been settling, we’ve sifted out an accepted disagreement around what it means to speak one’s mind, what the acceptable consequences are for doing so, and how blurred the line between violence and justice is.

I drove past the legislature on Tuesday night, on my way home from an evening buried in my laptop while other parents chatted during their children’s dance classes. My kids asked me why there were so many people on the steps. At the time, I didn’t know it was a gathering to valorize and memorialize Kirk. But now I’m not sure what I would have told my kids, just nine and 11 years old, what that gathering was about. I’m not sure I even know what it was really about.

But I think no matter where we stand in this increasingly polarized conversation, the implications of the article about micro-relationships is perhaps a place we can start. We can dig deep for some “micro-bravery,” as the author suggests, and endeavour a small conversation with someone we aren’t necessarily sure will like or agree with us.

I tried this yesterday with an unnamed neighbour across the lane. He seems to leave for work at the same early hour I do. When I venture out into West Broadway darkness around 6:30 a.m. each workday, he’s often climbing into his car too. In the winter, this early bird and I scrape our windshields in percussive duet. Sometimes we have to wait for the other to pull out of our parking spot before we can depart. Honestly, it’s nice to know someone else is in the spooky back lane during the dark early morning. So, yesterday I ventured a “good morning” for the first time. Perhaps it’s the start of a new habit.

And that, my friends, is my brave little bit of unasked-for advice of my own, in a world where frequent missed opportunities for connection cause all-too-frequent opportunities for misunderstanding. Next time I see Advice Guy, I’ll share this with him too, and maybe, if I’m brave enough, I’ll ask for his name.

rebecca.chambers@freepress.mb.ca