Kebabs and Strangers
On weddings, strangers, and the stress that helps
Over the last 1.5 years, I have been to 3 weddings where I didn’t know anyone except the groom.
I want to pause and emphasize a bit here. This is not “knew a few people vaguely”, “oh! I have seen her on Insta”, “yeah! I have heard about him” kinda situation. I literally knew only the groom. Two from college days. One colleague. I had to travel to different states for 2/3 of the weddings. I have written about one of these weddings before, mostly about the food and the tug-of-war. This is about something else.
I was a bit nervous before the first wedding. I was pretty unsure how it would go. I am an ambivert. So, I was not sure if I would like the experience or not. I spent most of my time near the food stalls. Sipping drinks and eating kebabs. By the third time, I started appreciating the events much more. This is a unique experience. And I would highly recommend it. Why?
Mostly for two reasons.
The first is about what the invitation implies. Suppose you are invited to a wedding. If the invitation is genuine, that is something worth acknowledging. The bride/groom probably had invited 1% of the total pool of people they know. And they thought you should be one of them. That is a big privilege in itself. One shouldn’t take this for granted. The final guest list might have many constraints. Budget, venue capacity, proximity, etc. And you made it. Added to that, you are the only person from the common circle that they thought of inviting. That is also a bit special.
There is something a little ungrateful about being invited to one of the most important days of someone's life and spending it wishing you were home watching something on your laptop. Or worse, declining because you will not know anyone there, as if your own comfort is the relevant variable. It is about their life. The biggest day of their life. If you value them, just be there.
The second reason is harder to articulate, but I think it is an important one.
I was listening to an episode of the Art of Manliness recently, a conversation with Jeffrey Hall, a professor who studies human relationships and has a book called The Social Biome. The central idea in the episode is that socialising is a kind of hormetic stressor, the same category as exercise or a cold shower. A small, acute dose of it makes you more resilient. The friction is not incidental to the benefit. It is the benefit. Just like with exercise, people tend to dramatically overestimate how bad it will feel before they do it. And post that, most of the time, we feel better.
I didn’t have the vocab for it then, but I kinda-sorta lived this principle back in 2018. In 2018, I was figuring out what to do with my life. I was trying to know myself better. I had no job. Nowhere to go. I was preparing for entrance exams1. During that period, I decided that I would always go out whenever someone had invited me. It can be an acquaintance. A distant relative. Some puja or festivals. It doesn’t matter. I will be attending them.
I would never create a comfortable space around myself. In my bed. The social stress forces you to think about what you want to do. And when you meet your peers, you also get to know about what is happening elsewhere. Someone is moving to a new city, a new country. Getting a new job. This makes you think about what you would like to do. When you are a bit aimless in life, it is quite possible to drift away. You tend to stay at home and inside your head. Which is not a great neighbourhood to stay in. Going out, meeting people, and answering "what are you up to?" forces a question you keep avoiding when left alone.
I had figured this out before I had a name for it. Hall calls this "following the weaker impulse." When you have had a hard day, and there is somewhere to be and every part of you wants to stay home, you notice that impulse and you go anyway. Not because you are disciplined in some grand sense, but because you have started to understand what that discomfort is actually doing for you.
Weddings where you know no one are a concentrated version of this. You cannot drift to a familiar corner. (Because there is none. Duh!) You have to engage, or you have a bad time2. And almost always, you end up having a better time than you expected.
I have had real conversations with a retired army man who was advising his niece to learn Java and AI, two people from startups who disagreed with each other about something I have now forgotten, and a local businessman who was quite busy with his weekend orders. I do not remember any of their names. I haven’t talked to them ever since.
But I remember all three of those evenings quite well.
Ordinary thoughts, shared with hope. Pass it along if it resonated.
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Mostly GATE.
Well, if you are fine with being bored, then this is not a problem. Some degree of boredom is actually not bad.