On the Meeting of Minds

There are these moments, I'm sure you know them, with friends or strangers or those in between, where your eyes meet and you know you're sharing a thought. Countless songs and poems and epic sagas have been centered around these moments... across a crowded room, in a crisis, just before the elevator door slides shut. Mine aren't usually all that dramatic. I find them on the MAX, at work, out with friends... simple little moments of shared experience, where our thinking collides and we are of one mind for a second or two. I can map my life with eyes-meet moments.

In truth, it's a bit of a miracle. I've been told repeatedly that I have an unusual world view, but each of us is really wandering around in the bubble of our own experience. None of us truly see the world the same way, and yet we intersect, if only briefly, through the meeting of eyes and the sharing of covert smiles... inside jokes and eyebrow raises, shared admiration, a collective "aww!"

I crave these intersections, so much so that I find myself overwhelming people with information, in a perpetual state of "overshare" with the hope that I'll generate that feeling. I'll share any secret that's mine to tell, any weakness, any strength... it's annoying. I'll pipe in my matching stories with "This one time at band camp" enthusiasm, trying always to prove that we have things in common, we can reference them, we can think the same way...

I cling to the people with whom the intersections are frequent... I pull them in and keep them circling within reach. They are the remedy to loneliness, the proof that I'm known, that maybe my "unusual world view" isn't that much of a mystery after all.

Today I am thankful for intersections. For the desire to seek them and the joy of finding them... and thankful I have so many of you to intersect with.