2008 Woodie Awards
Or So She Thought
I didn't even know her name
Issue date: 10/26/05 Section: Opinion
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Online Editor
I was at a rest stop last week when I met a stranger. She was an older woman, the kind of woman who looked like a grandmother because of the kitten sweatshirt she wore. We were in the restroom and I couldn't get the automatic sink on my side of the counter to come on. She laughed about how sad it was that technology was moving too fast for even the young people and then told me I could use the sink she had been at. She walked out the door, and I suppose I will never see her again.
This story may seem meaningless on the surface. We didn't talk about anything important, we weren't old friends, I didn't even know the woman's name, but the whole situation struck something inside of me. How often do we go through the motions everyday without really thinking, without really caring?
As odd as it may seem, it is actually a relatively normal thing to have small passing conversations with complete strangers. You talk about the weather with the cashier while paying for groceries. You complain with the person in front of you while waiting in a long line. You share frustrated glances across the room with a classmate who you have never even spoken to when a professor assigns another paper. You encounter more strangers everyday than you do actual friends, and yet there is no change, no impact.
When did it become okay to sleepwalk through life? It is as if we should be and have become satisfied only with the people we know. Others are allowed to come into our lives, but only for a little bit before we move on to more important things. Doesn't anyone realize that these others have their own stories going on? This life isn't only about what is happening in our own lives.
Sometimes we are the strangers to them.
It is time to make a difference. I doubt it would have changed the world as we know it if I had asked that older woman her name, but I think it would have changed something between us. It is amazing how close a name will bring two people together. Who knows what it might have meant to the woman if I had asked her name. It may have meant nothing at all, but just maybe she could see that someone cared to know something about her, and that is a comforting thought.
Maybe it just comes down to something so cliché as how much a smile may mean to someone. I have even felt the warmth of a stranger's smile, that understanding glance that brings the feeling of not being so alone. I am so cold sometimes, so centered on what is going on in my life that I completely forget that others have their own sagas unfolding. What makes me more deserving of time and understanding than they?
We just need to wake up from the daily drudgery that works to pull us down and to branch out and try to make a difference in someone's life. If we didn't need others, we would not have been given the ability to smile or talk or laugh or cry. We would never feel lonely. We were created to interact with each other, and it is time for us to start.