The secret ingredient is... Nothing.

So, a friend I had made recently came to visit me in my new place last night. Till date I had always wondered how we even became friends, being stark opposites of each other. She likes to party, goes clubbing even when she has high fever and can barely stand up straight. I like to stay indoors and my idea of an ideal weekend is lots of movies and a tub of Ben and Jerry's with friends. She lives to socialize and would talk to just about anyone who had ears to listen with. I abstain from talking to strangers and sometimes walk the opposite direction just to avoid having to make conversations even with people I know.
Anyway she was giving me an account of all the people she had made that week and something just made me ask 'How can you even talk to strangers. What do you talk to them about?'. I thought it was finally time that I got the secret ingredient to being a socializer. My reaction to the answer was very similar to the one of Po in Kung Fu Panda when he was told the secret ingredient to making some great soup was nothing. This being because like Po, even I had always known the answer.
It being, It's way easier talking to strangers. You have your whole life to talk about, and the best part is, you start with a zero. You can tell them your version of your story. Of course it is not so comforting because you would not know if this stranger would be your own Master Shifu to help you out with your domestic problems, or a Tai Lung who would back-stab you and use your secrets as a dagger to slash your world into pieces. So of course, your conversation with strangers would have to pretty much be limited to 'Protected landscapes was so boring today' and not 'I have been trying to remember my bank pin code. It's 2345. I just can't seem to remember it.'
But it is easier said than done. The idea of opening up to new people being so foreign to me. I guess a bird will always fly and the fish will always swim. Chalk and cheese.