Every single young person is reachable. Ask them what dating is

In the marketplaces of speech and silence, a traveler offers a simple key: “Every single young person is reachable. Ask them what dating is like in their country. Ask them if they have a girlfriend. Ask them what their type is. There’s nobody who’s too conservative to talk about that.” So speaks Jared Cohen, and his words carry the old wisdom dressed in new cloth: if you would cross a river of difference, step first upon stones of shared desire. The saying teaches that beneath banners and borders, beneath doctrine and dress, there is a common curiosity about love—how it begins, how it is courted, how it is blessed or forbidden.

The meaning is not small. To call every young person reachable is to assert that connection is a craft, not a miracle. The craft begins with the ordinary, with questions humble enough to be answered and human enough to be trusted: What does dating look like here? Do your elders praise it or forbid it? Do your friends tease you about a girlfriend or a crush? What is your type, if you dare to name it? These are not tabloid questions; they are the doorways to a people’s soul, because courtship is that place where custom and longing negotiate a peace.

And note the strategy hidden in plain sight: begin where the other already lives—feeling, dreaming, wondering. Even the most conservative robe hides a heart that has quickened at a glance. When we ask about love, we are not trivial; we are tactical in the holiest sense. We choose a question that carries no accusation, only curiosity. We light a small fire and invite another to warm their hands. From such warmth, more difficult truths can later be spoken—about work and faith, about law and liberty—but the first spark is this tender, universal ember.

Consider a true story to make the lesson walk. A young aid worker, Mariam, was posted to a mountain town where outsiders were tolerated but not welcomed. Meetings about health policy collapsed into rehearsed speeches; interviews yielded shrugs. One evening, sitting on a stoop, she asked a teenage shepherd, “How do people here choose a spouse?” He laughed, surprised by the question’s boldness and innocence, and answered with the rules of festivals, the secret signals of eyes, the poetry traded under winter moons. Two friends joined, then five. They debated the merits of cousin marriage, the cost of bride gifts, the thrill of stolen letters. Within a week, Mariam was no longer “the agency woman” but “the one who listens.” Soon, when she asked about vaccination rumors, they answered without suspicion. The road to public health had run through the alleyways of the heart.

History, too, whispers confirmation. When the trobairitz and troubadours wandered medieval courts, they sang publicly of private desire, creating a shared language that softened political edges. In the twentieth century, cultural envoys who could speak not only of treaties but of dances, betrothals, and songs found doors opening that had been shut to pure policy. Again and again, the talk of love made room for the talk of law. The ancients knew this: in the Book of Cities it is written (and if not, it should have been), “Where hearts meet, councils follow.”

What, then, is the lesson to pass to our apprentices and our children? That bridges are built with questions, and the first plank is often dating—that modest theater where a society rehearses its deepest values. Ask about it with respect. Do not pry; invite. Do not reduce; receive. Treat the answers as treasure maps—each custom pointing to a mountain of meaning, each anecdote to a valley of pain or joy. When you honor a people’s way of choosing one another, you prove yourself safe enough to speak of how you choose everything else.

Take these counsels as provisions for the road. First, ask a simple, human opener about love and courtship before any heavy matter; let listening be your first diplomacy. Second, mirror back what you heard, naming the beauty you found in their practice; gratitude oils the hinges of further speech. Third, offer your own story briefly and humbly—what your elders taught, what you yourself believe—so conversation feels like exchange, not extraction. Fourth, widen the circle: from girlfriend to family, from type to tradition, from custom to challenge. Fifth, keep the tone playful and dignified at once: humor without mockery, candor without pressure. Practice this, and you will find what the proverb-maker promised: every single young person is reachable, and through them, often, the world.