I’ve been doing a lot of driving between Kansas City and Springfield lately in preparation for my brother’s wedding. This evening as I was making excellent time (do you like how I threw that in there?), I found myself thinking about all of the people that connect my brother, my future sister-in-law, and me together. AND how the people who connect us, also connect to others in our lives.
The circle of people with whom you are connected and don’t know. I think of all the people I’ve met through my friends. People I’ve talked to for one night, or people who in turn became my friend. It reminds me a bit of the levels of connection on LinkedIn.com. You are connected to someone in the 3rd degree through your boss or through a vendor. They can introduce you and you can either become connected, or you can remain peripheral.
I am still in awe of the fact that there exist other people with whom I may never be acquainted.
During the drive home tonight, there was a guy behind me in a Jeep. He had Nebraska plates, sunglasses with silver stems, and he was on the phone. Like me, he was driving down the same stretch of highway, on his way somewhere. Maybe a wife was waiting. He’s lived, breathed, acted, made mistakes, cried, loved, worked- he’s just like me. A person living life. It really gives me pause when I think about all of the people I see in a day and never meet. They are all people with stories. Who knows what we have in common, or not. How small we are. I know them as Red Car, Stupid Van, Jeep, Scion (tC!)- but all are driven by people. And at that moment in time, we were all heading the same way, our stories converging, but not meeting.
