What does it mean to connect with someone? Throughout our lives we will only meet a finite amount of people–most of which will be strangers. The person you see in a car passing you by on your way to work. A fellow shopper at a supermarket, trying to decide which pasta to choose to make their dinner for the night. Perhaps a customer whose order you took at a coffee shop.
When does a stranger no longer become a stranger? Once you know their name? After you share a beer together? When you start to pause when you see them connecting for that extra little bit of time? We will at a certain undetermined–if not predetermined–time see and interact with our last stranger; and we will do so none the wiser. If you went home today closed your eyes and ceased to exist, would you remember your last stranger you met? Would they really be a stranger in your eyes? Or would that stranger have made some sort of impression on you that no longer rendered them a stranger, but another one of the characters you have imagined in your mind. The characters that you have assembled–hand-picked, crafted, curated, chosen to be part of the story that is your life.
What is it that draws us, pulls us in towards strangers? That which breaks the barrier between total stranger and life-long friend? Is it that we resonate with some sort of unseen frequency which when in close proximity with one another we can imperceptibly feel and at that precise moment act upon, thus making first contact–connection is made? Are we really in control of those feelings? Those moments? Are we really in control of anything or is there some unseen hand guiding us along our path, hinting at some future that is on the horizon, always one step too far to truly see for ourselves. Only to be revealed after that step is taken and the cycle continues step by measly step until we reach our end.
On that note, I’ll leave you with a quote from an episode of X-Files I heard last night. It made me pause the show so I could write it down. “Maybe it’s other people’s reactions that make us who we are.” – Fox Mulder (Season 4, Ep. 20)
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