Dancing with Strangers in Times Square

If a stranger asked you to dance with them in Times Square, would you?

Now, Times Square is great for dancing. Cars and Buses do the Bump-and-Grind on Broadway. (Beep. Honk!) Tourists do the selfie shuffle (Walk. Pose. Click.) Parents and children pirouette with a dozen Statues of Liberty. Even the billboards do a seductive Bossa Nova, with warm lights and glamorous dreams.

Ladies and gentlemen. I didn’t always feel this way. Times Square terrified me until three strangers danced with me in November. With one crazy dream, they taught me that just listening can change the world.

It was a Tuesday, and I was minding my own business. I was walking up Times Square doing what I call the Dance of No. No. I don’t know where the F train stops. I don’t want to buy Hello Kitty sunglasses. Thank you! No. No. No.

And there they were. On 43^rd Street and Seventh Avenue. Three college students wearing bright yellow vests with red sequins, all dancing in a line.

Something like that, at least.

Beautiful. I watched until they finished their set. But when I turned to leave, they circled me and started dancing again. Join us, one of them said.

Dance with strangers. Wearing Day-Glo apparel. In Times Square. That’s an easy one. Noooo.

They didn’t take No for an answer. They just started dancing faster and said stuff that sounded really, really intelligent. It was kind of intimidating.

For example, one said.

Sir. They always used sir. Elie Weisel once said that we should look upon every human being like its own universe, with its own secrets, and its own treasures.

Another one said.

Sir. Fear is like a broken cellphone. It doesn’t let you hear anyone.

The third one was dangerous. It involved math.

Sir. Did you know the average person has 60,000 thoughts per day? 60,000. All you need to have a successful conversation is to have one of your thoughts resonate with one of the 60,000 thoughts someone else had that day. 60,000 times 60,000 translates into nearly 4 billion opportunities to not mess up a conversation.

My response was simple. Boooosch!

What are you doing, I asked them.

It was a school project. A social experiment to see if they could infect a stranger with hope. It was soon after the Paris attacks and there was so much fear. These students wanted to see if they could keep people listening. Keep them listening. They had wandered the sidewalks for days doing this.

They also have an ambitious social media dream. They call it a worldwide symphony.

Imagine inspiring a group of people to think on a question: how to cure loneliness or how to cure hatred. Make it grow. The sky’s the limit. A hundred thousand? A million? A hundred million? Why not a billion? All of them thinking, sharing and creating until they have breakthrough after breakthrough, Eureka after Eureka. A cross country insight that travels from city to city to city. Waves of brilliance traveling around the world.

That’s their dream anyway. I almost didn’t hear it because I don’t dance with strangers.

Made me wonder, what else have I missed?

You can take the Dance of No too far. No. I don’t want to know you. You don’t speak my language. You don’t share my religion. You have a different view on love. No. No. No. No.

But what if we said Yes?

If these kids are right, we have nearly 4 billion chances to make a conversation work. Good odds if you think there is something worth hearing. And maybe there is always something worth hearing because we are all universes, with secrets and treasures. Look around you, you are amongst geniuses.

Every dance with a stranger can make the world less scary. [Grind.] Every effort to listen can give you another clue to make a worldwide symphony.

We can change the world. In Times Square. In Trafalgar Square, London. In Tahrir Square, Cairo. In La Place D’Etoile, the Square of the Star in Paris. We can create a grand new plaza, where we can share our lives and respect our differences while looking at the same brave new sky, with warm lights and glorious dreams. We can all dance together.

Realizing that, I let them teach me their dance moves. It was easy. It was easy.

Join us. Dance with a stranger.

Thank you.