Going First

In an interview almost ten years ago, former Olympic volleyballer Gabi Reese shared a story that has stayed with me ever since. She spoke of a time when her kids were at the toddler stage, and she had taken them to play at the local park. She characterized the scene as "hurricane harbor," a whirligig of noise and dirt and juvenile intensity. At a certain point she passed by two older women who seemed utterly unrelatable in terms of age, culture, and socio-economic status. There was a moment of awkwardness as the parties couldn't decide whether it was appropriate to acknowledge each another.

But Reese looked the women directly in the eye and smiled, and their response was immediate. They broke into warm and welcoming expressions of their own. From the speed of that response Reese realized the women had been ready, so ready, to reciprocate her humanity. It was just that they needed someone to go first.

As Reese thought more about this moment, she started to see how representative it was. She realized it's getting harder and harder for people to go first. Our phones carry a multitude of stimuli, providing infinite reasons to dodge the effort required to establish an interpersonal connection. The always-on nature of our digital lives gives license to remain engrossed in personal concerns.

I was in an Uber the other day and it suddenly occurred to me I had spent the whole time listening to a podcast. Not once did I engage the driver. With some shame I remembered how, just a few years ago, I would always strike up a conversation with whoever was behind the wheel. It had been consistently interesting to learn about the person's story, to elicit his or her opinion on various things, based on observable patterns in the rider population.

There's a Spanish verb — ensimismarse — that doesn't have an exact English equivalent. It means to retreat into oneself, to crawl into one's shell, to engage in endless brooding and navel-gazing. Our evolving digital world encourages a gradual drift toward ensimismarse. There doesn't seem to be any way to stop or slow down this train.

Some elements of AI will likely accelerate the trend. How long will it be before voice-directed AI assistants on our phone will create a whole new level of self-referential dialogue? Not long at all.

And yet all of us will remain ready, so ready, like those two women in the park. Ready for someone to switch channels and tune into the same frequency. Ready for someone to lead the walk in the messy spontaneity of human interaction. Ready for someone to pop the digital bubbles that deter authentic engagement.

It just requires someone to go first.