Serendipitous Connection

Sometimes you meet someone and you just know. That person connects with you on all the right wavelengths and wants to continue the conversation forward as much as you do. Those moments are rare, but when they happen they’re worth seizing. As someone who often puts my foot in my mouth I’ve appreciated when I met someone who was willing to look past the stumbling of words so I didn’t have to worry about saying the exact right thing at all times.

Moments of connection make us human. When we look across a table at someone and see them for who they are we know that we’re going to want to hang out.

This is how I became best friends with an amazing woman who is now my wife of almost 17 years. When we first met we had initial assumptions of the other person that turned out to be (mostly) false. We both wrote off the connection as not worth pursuing and went our separate ways.

Then through an unplanned event we spent several days together. In that time we started talking, really talking. Something changed. I realized her way of thinking about life matched what I wanted, and I couldn’t get enough of the conversation. The same happend with her.

Now, all these years later, we still love our long talks and opportunities to just tackle together what it means to live in this world and move through it. When I want to have a long philosophical discussion I often look forward to wrestling through it with her and seeing where it will go.

I’m so grateful for that connection, that opportunity to be seen by another amazing human and to feel appreciated.

This, of course, is one of the most special relationships someone can have, a partner to live life with and navigate through the coming decades together.

I wish this on everyone I meet, to have someone that you can trust wholeheartedly, to be real with, to struggle through things together with, and to ultimately share life.

Connection to other humans is this, but often in smaller bits and pieces. When we happen to meet someone in work or life and have a great conversation that ended up where we wanted more.

In getting older I’ve both learned to appreciate moments of connection with new people and also hold loosely to them. I’m not desparate for friends, but I appreciate them deeply. I’ve had great friends and I hope to have more, but I also don’t force it. So then, every few years it seems, I bump into a new person that I let my wife know will become a new friend. I hope this continues till the day I die, always looking for the beauty of connection.