About a month ago I was spending an afternoon on the sun-spotted patio of 18th Street Café in Santa Monica nursing a perfect peach iced tea when I was lucky enough to eavesdrop on one of the most perfect conversations I’ve ever been fortunate enough to overhear. This conversation was one of those things that just happened to me that reminded me how very small the world is.
And even though it’s a small place— or maybe because it’s a small place— the value of connection between people is high. When it comes to understanding and cooperation and decision-making and war and charity and being human connection is everything. It’s easier than it seems and much more natural if only we let it happen.
That afternoon the café was half-full of graying authors staring out onto Broadway getting inspired grad students staring into books getting intellectual and couples staring at each other getting in love. By the end of my unintentional wiretapping I had gotten all of the above.
At the bench next to me outside on the porch sat a 30-something blondish woman swimming in a sea of books and empty coffee cups. The windows of the café looked out onto her table and I had seen a tall thin man seated with his multiple notebooks on the other side of the windows while I was inside ordering my peach iced tea. They were two strangers sharing opposite sides of the same window and that was it. There were no stolen glances or anything— that window was their only connection I thought until the tall thin man from inside came out onto the patio.
“Excuse me but were you in Austria this summer?” he asked the book-swimming blondish woman sort of timidly but with one of those voice-smiles that says you already know the answer to your own question.
“Yes I was. Did I see you in the train station there?” she replied. When he laughed a yes she said “I even gave you a second look because I thought I recognized you.”
“Yes I saw that. I gave you a second look too he said.
From the rest of their conversation I gathered that they were both longtime 18th Street regulars and both in Austria this summer— he because he was touring Europe with a woman (a lover? Who knows, but it fit so beautifully in the conversation) and her child for the season; she because she is a native Austrian and was visiting her sister. They had caught each other at the train station, just enough time for a glance and a second glance, before catching separate trains. Then they were gone again, until their coffeehouse haunt provided a sunny afternoon months later for a reunion between strangers.
There I was, entirely unrelated to the topic of conversation, being blessed by two people I’d never seen before, who had never spoken before but knew each others’ faces, who had seen each other one day last summer, just for a second, someplace far away from the sun-spotted porch in Santa Monica.
After a couple of minutes of peach iced tea-flavored covert observations, I got up and left, too happy for words at the smallness and closeness of the world in which I live. How I am so blessed to have seen and heard something like that, I’m still trying to figure out.Actually, I think I’ve stopped trying to figure it out. Here’s what I’ve learned instead: The world is full of people, and we all belong to each other.
Sure, you can call that idealistic nonsense. Foolishness. Naivete. I get that a lot. I know you can’t build a treaty on that thought or use it to stop human trafficking single-handedly. Nobody is going to demilitarize Korea by whispering to armed soldiers, Hey we belong.” But it’s true. Society is just people. People are just people. Misunderstanding or ignoring the fundamental connections between us is one of the biggest disservices we can do one another. We see each other in cafés and train stations. The pretty girl in your English class is a person just like the woman on Third Street and Broadway who mumbles to herself about rising rent and she’s a person just like your mother is. No difference. A soul a mind and a face recognizable in your living room or in Austria.
We need each other. Start small and I promise this connection thing can grow. Just start small and soon. Go find someone today and connect with them however you can. Then keep it up. Nursing a peach iced tea usually helps.