Meeting Strangers

Last week I finally sat down for an entire service at church. Usually I try to sit for the service but eventually I would have to walk Liam down to the Nursery room so that he could play and not be too distracting in the sanctuary. The sermon last Sunday was titled "Guests in our own home." The ministers were talking about meeting strangers, the ones without and the ones within. It was a very moving service, or perhaps it was so moving because this is the first time I attended service with Liam in the Nursery. Anyway during the sermon I was thinking about the strangers that I have meet on my travels on the Greyhound bus.
Before I met and started dating Ahmie I went everywhere by bus. I grew up in the suburbs of New York City; I grew up riding the subway and the busses everywhere. I remember before my dad bought a car we took the train and subway to Chinatown Sunday for Chinese school and grocery shopping. As I grew up I went into the City all by myself to wander around, go to shops and museums, I loved being able to go anywhere I wanted by public transit. As my junior year in high school rolled by I started to visit colleges on my own by taking the Greyhound. I visited University of Rochester, Cornell University, and Case Western Reserve University (now known as Case).

For the most part the University visits were fairly generic and did not stand out very much in my memory. What do stick in my mind were the discussions that I had with some of the people traveling on the Greyhound with me. I remember a discussion that I had with an elderly gentleman on my way to Cornell. The elderly man was taking the bus to visit some family upstate. Although the key points of the discussion are lost in my mind, what I remember was camaraderie and the almost instant connection we had when discussing the many topics we talked about, I remember talking about Kierkgarrd and existentialist philosophy.
I also remembered talking with a black gentleman on my way to Cleveland to visit Case we talked about family and family obligations and how he is helping his sister move and that is what families do for each other riding hundreds of miles to help move and drive the moving truck. What I thought about during the service was that I was able to open up to strangers, not necessarily minute details about my life. But rather having an honest discussion with no pretense.
Perhaps it is my introverted nature that I find these transient conversations worth thinking about. I think it is being in transit that people are the most purely themselves, knowing that the scenery will change as surely as the people will change there is no need to pretend to be someone that you are not. Since the people encountered while traveling, are not in the usual cast of characters in ones life story, there is no need to be guarded and play the same role that one normally plays.

Sometimes I miss riding the Greyhound.