On talking to strangers
When I was a student at university, I’d regularly take low-cost flights back home.
But — because those low-cost flights departed from airports far away from where I’d actually be going — I ended up traveling for hours.
I’d get bored and then invariably open to the strangers sitting next to me.
And often I’d end up having a meaningful conversations with them.
I loved that window of time in which I’d get to discover something about another person’s experiences and points of view.
Once, I remember sitting next to a middle-aged man. We got to talking and I found out that he was on his way home from a business trip.
I remember him feeling reluctant to talk at first but, eventually, he opened up — as if he was freed by the fact that I was a complete stranger and that we would never see each other again.
Anyway, I don’t recall the ins and outs of our conversation except for one thing.
At some point, when we were high in the sky, he began to tell me about the troubles he was having in his relationship with his wife.
He told me how his wife was having an affair with another man.
She had started seeing a man, he told me, who was involved with some theatre (a random detail I remember all these years later).
His wife had told him how this man was filling a spiritual hole in her, which, it seemed, her husband was unable to give her.
I felt the pain in his voice when he told me this.
And I remember thinking — utterly naively as a young 20 something year old — that I wouldn’t end up in a similar situation to him.
Now, a couple of decades on and I see that things are never that simple.
Life gets complicated and relationships get messy.
Talking to that man on the plane helped me see that.
So my point is this.
Talking to strangers is an opportunity for us to share our experiences, stories and points of view.
To absorb glimpses of life that are real because the anonymity and intimacy act as catalysts for vulnerability and truth.
That’s why, I think, these moments have the power to stay with us for years.
They remind us of our shared humanity.
Till next time,
Ben