I often get yelled at by the average precautionary person *cough cough mom* for hitchhiking down roads after I take a trail that was not on the agenda while hiking. Meeting these strangers, yes (mom if you’re reading this), can be dangerous but under the right circumstance, can be absolutely amazing.

After all the random rides that I have taken with these peculiar strangers I have been extremely lucky to have not been injured. Or, even worse, taken to some remote island on the coast of East-Bum-Nowhere. But here I am, still living and more aware than ever that a simple conversation with a random stranger can teach you a lot about yourself.

Each experience that I have had with a stranger I always, for obvious reasons, have a brief panic of a systematic plan if anything sketchy happens. Usually I channel my inner third-grade fire safety rules to stop, drop and ROLL the heck out of that car; luckily, I haven’t yet had to go through with my fool proof plan... yet. And hopefully I won’t have to in the near future, although it would be a gnarly story. But, to me, the stories I share with these random people are much more of a gnarly story to tell.

The first time I hitchhiked I missed my bus to New Jersey. At this point there was no going back. I had already made plans to surprise a friend back home and, not to mention, I had a LARGE amount of laundry I let build up because I knew I would be able to wash it for free at home. So essentially, I went in a car with a random driver because I wanted to wash my clothes for free you could say. I mean the things broke college students do right? I came to find that, yes, free laundry at home was certainly a perk but, so was the casual (and not so awkward) small talk that took place on the five-hour ride to Jersey. It actually turns out the more time you spend talking about random things with someone, the easier it becomes to talk to them as if they were your actual friend. Who would have thought, right? Anyways, the conversation made me realize a few things. He was a graduate student surprising his girlfriend at University of Delaware. Not only did I hear the love story of this precious couple, I got some insight on how it feels to be a graduate student from the perspective of someone actually pulling their hair out because of it. Just kidding, well, only a little bit. Of course, the meaningful conversation was the meat of the story but, I won’t lie, we did share some good ol’ song car jams together, as well. Thank you blink-182 for that bonding moment.

Another time I hitched a ride with a rando wasn’t necessarily me getting into a random car with someone but more accepting the hitchhiker. This, for me, was far more sketchy because the hiker was a month in on the Appalachian Trail. And, as any hiker knows, when you are on the trail for a month you probably smell nothing far from a dirty sock left in the washer for about the same duration that he was on the trail for. Give or take a couple of dank smells. So, after I accepted the smell seeping into the cushions of my truck, the real conversation started. I talked about my psychology major, and honestly, at that time in my life I didn’t really believe in this major as a challenging field. The reason being, everyone in my life discredited it as being less scholastic and challenging than any other major. This guy (I’m sad I don’t remember his name now) told me that he thought that psychology was a field that so many discredited because it is so interesting and inexplicable. So, hey. Thanks guy. But for real, thank you, where ever you are, you helped reassure my feelings for a major that I wouldn’t change for the world. And, in fact, part of your kind words probably helped me choose my other new major of environmental policy because of my love for the outdoors.

Although sharing my hiking and some of hitchhiking stories may not have you feeling very sympathetic to the message I am trying to convey, I hope you will be able to internalize the next message I relay to you. That is, the paradox of our twenty-first century mindset.

The real paradox is that millennials want to so badly fit into a wanderlust persona but they don’t confront people face-to-face. They don’t notice the sky when they walk, they don’t say “hi” to the people they pass on their way to class and, they are too engrossed in their phones to talk to the random person in line standing next to them. The number one rule in being a wanderlust is not always to find the nearest random car and enjoy a little tea time talk with for a couple of hours. I promise, there is a less hectic and dangerous alternative. If you want to be adventurous, the number one thing you must venture is the perspectives of the strangers living amongst you. These strangers can be the person next to you in your two hundred plus student economics class or the quiet person in your writing class. With these simple perspectives of people that you have never talked to before, you can actually find yourself becoming more adventurous within your mindsets and in your everyday life.

Strangers can help you feel a connectedness between a world you do not know. And every person you do not know has experienced a life completely different from yours. If you cannot travel the world, the best next thing is traveling the minds of the people you have never met. This will help you learn about the world around you, yourself and the population of your world. Crazy things happen when you loosen your boundaries. Crazy things like deeper conversations, inspiring others and getting inspired by others. And, to be honest with you, that’s where half of my random facts come from. Like, “beetles actually taste like apples”, well I don’t know how well I trust that but he did seem like he had a few in his lifetime so, I’ll humor him.

So, stop the trend of not talking to random people, it’s not weird! Although getting random rides with strangers may be dangerous (@mom), there are other ways to be adventurous. We made it accustomed for it to be seemingly weird when we tell a stranger we like the color of their shirt or when you tell them that you appreciate their comments in class. Who knows, you can even make their day because they know that someone appreciates them and noticed them. At the end of the day, we all want to be appreciated, we all want to be relatable and we all want to venture into a world of something new. Hey, if anything, take it from the girl that accepts random rides from people and lets dirty hikers in her car. Cool conversations with cool random people will be the highlight of your day. Just don’t tell my mom because she’ll probably be mad at you too. “DO IT” (Labeouf 2015).