We live in the amazing time, where you can get anything, find anything, go anywhere (well...almost everywhere) and you mostly don't have to worry about essential things like people did in the past (crops are failing, 5 out of 6 children are going to die). We are so comfortable in our time that we are just relaxed and enjoying everything we can get. We don't do hard labour as people used to, we get better money, we can entertain ourselves with Breaking Bad on TV and tons of other things instead of cheap whiskey in a brothel. The main difference is that in the past there was a lot of unknown to an ordinary human mind and people dreamed about crossing the ocean on a plane, finding out what's killing the babies, how many stars are there, when today it's all known. What about the new stuff, isn't there always something new? It is, but we're too busy not dreaming about it just because we're so comfortable living. So instead of spending a night next to a fire, looking at the stars we watch youtube, talk to people on-line and play videogames. We're very comfortable. People have realized their potential nowadays yet they do nothing with that. We put a veil in front of our eyes so we wouldn't notice the cold, hard, unexplored depths of human mind or universe so we wouldn't take ourselves out of our comfort zone. And about speaking to strangers: a lot of times those strangers don't even have anything interesting to say. In order to get to the essence of a person you have to break through that veil and found out, what kind of real "fire" is inside. We're too afraid to be judged, too scared to be challenged, too frightened to escape the routine, too nervous about achieving something, too unsure about anything and everything. We, the people, hold ourselves back and only we can break this cycle. Don't look at anyone else and do your own thing, ask yourself what do you want and what do you really think. Imagine there's nobody else around you, and break free of everything that might hold you back. Your mind is one amazing thing and you should explore it and eventually that road will bring you up to your standarts of quality life (I mean the non-routine one). At least that's what I think.