Dear Stoics,

There is an unwritten rule on trains, on the streets, and in waiting rooms everywhere: we sit centimetres from one another and behave as if we were alone. It feels polite and safe, but according to a growing body of research, it’s not that great for our well-being.

It has become a kind of tradition in our letters to mention a piece of psychological research, and we’re not going to change that today. So, let’s start with a field experiment on London commuters described in The Journal of Experimental Psychology. The researchers assigned some travellers to start a casual conversation with a stranger on their journey, and others to keep to themselves as usual. The talkers reported a significantly more positive experience and, unexpectedly, said they’d learnt more from their commute too. This wasn’t just a case of one particularly friendly city; a meta-analysis pooling seven studies and over two thousand people found the same pattern again and again. It looks like our fears about talking to strangers are very much overblown.

So why do train carriages and buses stay silent all over the world? The London study found that the hardest barrier is starting the conversation. People expected that others wouldn’t want to talk. And since everyone assumes this about everyone, whole train cars full of people who would enjoy a chat sit quietly, each waiting for a signal that never comes. Another series of experiments found we’re especially wrong about deep conversations. Asked to discuss meaningful questions with strangers, people predicted awkwardness, but later reported connection and surprising care from someone they’d met minutes earlier. We really underestimate how interested strangers are in us.

There is one thing we find especially hopeful: overcoming this fear is trainable. In one study, participants spent a week on a “conversational scavenger hunt”, approaching one stranger a day, and their expectations grew measurably more accurate and more optimistic with each attempt. The effect was still visible a week later. In other words, the dread is like a weather forecast, and forecasts change and improve as we gather more data.

There’s also something worth noticing in the word itself: “stranger” is the only social category designed to be temporary. It dissolves the moment contact is made. Just one conversation, and the person has a name, a story, and an opinion about the weather or politics. Think about it: every friend you’ve ever had was once a stranger. Every single person you’ve met in your life was once a complete unknown.

So this week, we suggest a small experiment (but only if it’s comfortable to you). Try to overcome your shyness and talk to someone you don’t know. Ask your neighbour about their dog, or say something to the person next to you in the queue; it can be completely casual. Then, in your journal, write about three things: what you feared beforehand, what actually happened, and how you felt afterwards. Who knows, maybe over time, your journal entries will become evidence that the world is friendlier than your forecasts.

Yours truly,
The Stoic App Team

The phrase usually arrives with a sad sigh, but this week’s theme, On Good While It Lasted, is all about a discovery that an ending doesn’t cancel what came before it, and remembering can be done without mourning.

We all carry finished chapters, and we tend to file them under loss. This week, we’ll practise filing them under gratitude instead: saying “that was good,” without sadness, and even noticing the things that were good precisely because they were only temporary. Some of the finest things in life were never meant to be permanent. The best place to revisit them is a page only you can read, so open your journal and start with whichever memory arrives first.