My first memory of Maastricht was rain. As we dragged our tired feet and bulky luggage towards the bus, the cold rain pelted us, falling from the grey, smothering skies, drenching our jackets and our carry-on bags. My parents used to tell me how rain came to be: whenever humans made the ancient sky god angry or upset, the god would cry, and his tears would lash down on us in order to make us share his misery. As I curled up on my seat on the bus, watching raindrops splash and smear across the window, I thought to myself: it looks like the Dutch gods don’t like us very much. I know, of course, that this thought is irrational. I have received the sort of education that makes me believe in science, that makes me trust scientists and their explanations of how the world works. The climate of the Netherlands is oceanic. The weather will always be unpredictable, and, more likely than not, there will be rain. Being thousands of miles away from home, however, it is easier for me to find relief in the stories that remind me of the home I left behind, and it is hard not to choose easy over right.
It is difficult to be a stranger. In history class, we were taught that being human was not merely a matter of taxonomy but a developed social identity. I am a member of the species Homo sapien; this is an indisputable fact. The state of being human, however, is entirely dependent on the opinions of others. I am recgonized as a human because of my acceptable position in the web of social relations, a web woven by my ties with my family, my peers, my culture. Therefore, the absence of these relations inevitably leads to a loss of my personhood; I am no longer known and treated as my father’s daughter, as a student of the local school, or even as an inhabitant of my city.
I have yet to find my place within this new web of relationships, and because of this, I cannot be fully human. Without these social ties, I find no comfort in a shared history—because there is no shared history. Without these social ties, I do not belong; without these social ties, I am alien. Kurt Vonnegut spoke about the “terrible disease of loneliness”. Loneliness is, indeed, a disease: because it is profoundly painful, because it is dangerous (and can very well be life-threatening), and because there is no choice. You can choose to be alone, but you cannot choose to be lonely—you simply are. I have been lonely before, even within the familiarity of my own culture, and it felt very much like a disease, the kind that tears you apart and reduces you to insignificance, the kind that fosters unspeakable pain. To me, the disease of loneliness is inevitable: strangers are lonely because they cannot be loved, and they cannot be loved because it is irrational to love strangers, because in order to love one must be vulnerable, to be vulnerable one must have trust in one another, and there is no good reason for one to trust someone they do not even know, let alone understand. As a stranger in a foreign land, I expect the disease of loneliness to come at me like a rogue freight train: slowly, then all at once.
It has been weeks. I waited, and waited, and waited. The train never came. I am surprised. I close my eyes to think, to remember, and suddenly, I see.
It is difficult to love strangers; however, it is not impossible, and anything that is not impossible can be done.
The love for strangers is different from the love for family, the love for knowledge, the love for music, nor the love for friends. Those kinds of love are based on a prerequisite of trust: I willingly give my love to you, because time has proven that you are worthy of it. I choose to bare my soul in front of you, because you have given me enough reason to believe that you will not choose to hurt me with my vulnerability.
A trust this deep cannot exist between strangers, simply because the term itself implies a lack of shared history; without a shared history, there is nothing upon to found this trust. In this sense, the love for strangers is a unique kind of love: the willingness to trust those who have not yet proven their trustworthiness, the willingness to be vulnerable without proof that one won’t use that vulnerability to harm, the willingness to tear down one’s defenses in order to invite others in, the willingness to lead the trojan horse pass the city gates of Troy without knowing what’s inside. As I reminisce upon the past few weeks, I start to feel the love—for strangers, from strangers—erupt from my memory: the strangers that held the flags against the wind on the first day, cheering and shouting and lending a helpful hand as we got off the bus; the strangers that are my roommates, who greeted me with a bear hug and asked about my travels, brimming with questions about my life and the land I came from; the strangers that are my co-years, who spoke with me in our native tongue and qualmed the flurries of homesickness that had appeared; the strangers that invited me to their table while I stood alone in the Mensa line; the strangers that are my classmates, whom I recgonized by face if not name in the hallway, whom I shyly waved towards, and who waved shyly back; the strangers that walked with me on the busy city streets, raising glasses (of boba), together, to the sunset that dyes the sky pink before our eyes; the stranger that, while fixing my emailxw, kindly yet passionately lectured me on the importance of cybersecurity; the strangers that served me food, checked out my books and cracked the worst dad jokes; the strangers that became my companions as I come to terms with my strangerness—until I feel like a stranger no more.
It is easy to refuse to love strangers. To shut one’s doors close from unknown dangers, to choose the path already traveled—it is the rational decision, perhaps even the right decision to make. But to open those doors, to believe in the goodness of others, to know the risk and choosing to love anyway? That is what makes us human.
We are dancing in the rain. It is nighttime, and it is cold, and there is school tomorrow, and I should be going back to bed. I dance anyway. In the darkness, someone’s hands reach towards me, and I hold onto them. Through the pouring rain, I see their face: a stranger. I find that I do not mind. We lean back and gave our weight to gravity, spinning around faster and faster, until we had to let go. I shiver violently from the cold; someone hugs me, and, eager for the warmth, I hug them back. Someone started to play music; I grasp someone’s hand, and someone grasps mine. We start to run around in a circle, laughing and yelling and singing, sucking the marrow out of life.
To love strangers, I think, is to be brave enough to be kind.