I’ve wondered about why people move in and out of your life. While on a road trip last week, I met several people who have stayed with me. On Tuesday morning, while packing up my bike to head out, I met a woman who worked at the hotel. We talked light-heartedly about the nature of travel and meeting people. She talked about how she would just get in her car and drive when she was younger. I could hear in her voice that this was a part of herself she missed.
The conversations drifted towards how the people you meet in the real world are not the horrible people you always hear about on the news. She began to tell a tale of losing her home to a tornado. She was on her way to church when the sky started changing, so she and her husband headed back inside to take cover in their bathtub. They lost everything.
It was clear she was trying hard to hold back the tears. She cleared her throat and told me how the people that came to help her after the tornado were complete strangers; not the people she had known her whole life.
When someone trusts you enough to share such information and expose themselves to you, it is a gift. She went back to her life, but since that morning I have thought about her dozens of times. I’m not sure what I learned from watching her smile through her pain, or why she moved my life, but I do know that she did indeed.
I’ll leave you with this to think on:
“Everything always matters insofar as every experience, every moment, every person who passes through your life helps to shape you.
People come and go, but the lessons you learn from them can stay with you forever. “
http://www.fuzzygalore.com/2015/10/talking-to-strangers-the-power-of-vulnerability/