Why do we fear rejection?

For the last 19–days (and at least another 11), I’ve been approaching strangers in the street and asking to take their photograph. Sometimes they say yes, sometimes they say no. The minimum requirement for each day is to have at least one portrait accompanied by a quote.

Everyone has a story, and this project is meant above all to remind me of that. The quote forces me to engage with a person. Even if the anxious voice in my head tells me to flee, I have to connect with a person enough to get at something about their story.

When I was back in England last, I surprised my father (and myself somewhat) by saying “I want to spend the rest of my life in conversation with people”. My father and I are similar in a lot of ways, but here we differ. Almost nothing would compel my father to approach a stranger unprovoked, heck, he says very little to the people he knows.

I create other mini-challenges that ratchet up the difficulty, eg. after noticing that I was only approaching men, out of fear of making women uncomfortable, I made the following day’s challenge to get at least one portrait of a woman approximately my age.

I’m proud of both the effort and the output, though not yet satisfied. The resistance — the fear — lingers. There’s probably an instinct related to fragile masculinity at work here but, if so, it is misplaced. Because the “risk” to my standing is miniscule. I am a guest in Vancouver, I have no standing here and therefore nothing to lose.

But I know that more than that, this fear comes from a lifetime spent in my own head,

When you focus too much on yourself, you become disconnected and alienated from others. In the end, you also become alienated from yourself, since the need for connection with others is such a fundamental part of who we are as human beings.