Public Speaking 1.0

We took our 4-month-old puppy to the city today to visit Tara's sister.  I'd been prepared for the passersby to react positively toward her (the puppy, I mean): let's face it, she's adorable.  She has the type of face that attracts everyone's attention - even those gruff, middle-aged men who don't want to admit that they have a sensitive side.  Of course, Kaylee's a terrible flirt too, because she comes up to give kisses and then immediately runs away after whatever smell/sound/sight has attracted her two-second attention span.  Naturally, I was prepared to show her off to all the pedestrians of Philadelphia.

What got me thinking is the fact that, had it not been for innocent little Kaylee, bouncing obliviously around my ankles, perhaps not one of the people I spoke to today would have otherwise even made eye-contact.  The typical tunnel-vision mentality of people these days apparently can sometimes broaden.  It seems that the normal hangups of strangerhood can be temporarily suspended when there's a puppy involved.  We can exchange smiles, or maybe even trade salutations.

I guess everyone needs some type of buffer for intimacy to take place - at least initially.  We go to restaurants on first dates because we don't want to introduce the potential Mr. or Mrs. Right to the dirty laundry sitting in our living rooms just yet.  We like the internet because it means we can edit our review and our comments before we make them, and choose the best possible profile picture to highlight our more attractive physical qualities.  On the street, in broad daylight, it's an entirely different story.  Are we all so afraid of rejection that we don't want to risk the possibility of receiving a mildly gruff "hello?"  Or maybe we just worship this god called time so much that we can't risk losing a few seconds to trivial conversation.

But is conversation really trivial?  Sure, maybe we just shoot the breeze and talk about the weather (see what I did there?), but maybe that two-minute conversation was the most pleasant, most peaceful moment of someone's otherwise stressful day.  Maybe that brief chat about the glorious afternoon was the one break in an individual's anxious thoughts.  Maybe those brief words we shared comprised the only in-person conversation that individual had all day long.

But we don't think about that in the moment, do we?  We only think about where we have to go and how weird it is when someone's gaze lingers on us for longer than a cursory glance.

The point is this.  I'm just as guilty as the next person of averting my eyes when someone I don't know passes me on the street.  It takes courage in this age to address a stranger without the barrier of a computer screen or the respectable distance of a phone call to protect us.  This generation needs an absolute, unmistakeable, honest-to-God reason to approach a stranger.  Wouldn't life be so much easier if we just had everyone's number and screen name and e-mail address, so that we could just talk via text, IM or even phone call?  Wouldn't life be so much simpler if we never again had to speak face-to-face to another person we didn't know?

Thank God that's not the way this life works.

Maybe none of this strikes anyone else the way it did me.  I was simply amazed by how easy it was to strike up a conversation with a total stranger about dogs, about pets in general, or even about absolutely nothing, with Kaylee there to lighten the mood.  It was something that I took advantage of, because despite my reservations, I believe that investing in one another's lives is part of the reason we're still here on this planet.  It's why Jesus said, "Go and make disciples," rather than commissioning the 12 with building monasteries.  We are a people not meant for isolation, but fellowship and communion.  In fact, Christianity is about deep spiritual intimacy with one another - confessing our sins to one another and praying for one another.  Of course it seems uncomfortable, because we've become so antisocial that we're no good at doing that!  But it has to start somewhere.  It has to start with letting down our armor and letting people in.  Love can't operate under any other circumstances.

In all reality, it shouldn't take the company of a 4-month-old puppy for me to interact with people - or for them to interact with me for that matter, but I'm only responsible for one half of that equation.  It's something, like anything, that requires practice to do with ease and confidence, and I'm not always going to have Kaylee with me to make it easy.  But with a face like she has, it's certainly a great advantage.