How to get close to, you know, people

Originally publised at Medium,
https://medium.com/@sptzortzis/how-to-get-close-to-you-know-people-fb366ccfdc55

The past year has been and still is a struggle for the people that are important to me and I care about. If that wasn’t enough, we were forced to go out and rediscover new lands since our wonderful Izmir was left behind.
As time goes by, I believe I have clarified a walkthrough to going out and meeting new people, a process that at first seemed impossible and useless. Here is my input on the matter.
To begin with, introduce youselves. Where have we met before? You must be the guy who does X a lot lately. For a name-blind individual in the people’s business, I still find it hard to relate faces to identites and I’ve always gotten around by linking friends with favorite song, food preference or maybe with another friend.
When you’re done with the acquaintances, raise your hand and narrate your story. Make your storytelling count, since that may be your only chance to win the audience’s attention. Make it important and colourful, as if you’ve heard it from someone else. Keep your senses present but quiet, be careful not to scare anyone away by giving them such a deep look inside, fortunately you’ll have time for that later.
Then stop. Listen to what anyone else in the room has to say. Throw the light of your story (or even theirs) against them, observe the edges on their faces and enjoy the shadow theatre that follows. That’s how familiarity is built, by getting to know the other’s pallete of reactions and expressions.
At that point, you should be ready to rip off the hardcover of your talebook and move forward to transparency — that’s how trust is built. Since comedy is tragedy plus time, take all the time you need to remove anything theatrical off of you. Clarify the origin of your DNA, surrender to a AMA session and solve most of your mysteries.
In the end, start building new ones. Rewrite the codes that relate you to those people. Find some time to define the constant factors in your equation. Most probably you will place a high value the time you’ve spent with them while still in the process of learning one another. Turn the lights out on transparency, since everything is already shared between you. Write your own stories.
And become predictable. How relaxing.