Curious

Look, I know I promised a post on love today, but do you mind if I hijack my own blog? Something else is on my mind today. (Let's discuss love tomorrow, shall we?)

Poor Suwanne, GA. I think I've chased her away forever, and all I wanted to do was say hello. I like people--well, most people. I did not like the nasty woman at Costco yesterday who reprimanded me for allowing my four year old to accidently walk in front of her cart--eegads!--but that is a whole other story. In my experience most people are pretty cool, and that is why I am curious as all get out about Suwanne, and anybody else who stops by. I'm not scared, nervous, bothered, freaked out, or worried; I'm just curious.

I've always been like that. As a kid I remember lying back on the grass and, seeing a jet pass overhead, thinking, "I wonder where all those people are going?" I remember the world suddenly opening up, and I realized that as real as my life was to me, theirs was to them. They were living a whole different set of cirucumtances that I would never understand, and, except for this brief moment of passing, we would probably never meet. There were thousands--millions--of others who loved and hurt and worried, laughed and lived their lives in counterpoint to mine; the thought was so large I felt that it pressed me to the earth.

Since then I've had an incurable compulsion to note people, to watch them, to discover what might lie behind their behavior, to conclude their circumstances, because for a moment our lives bump one another, we inhabit the same space, but we experience it differently. That idea fascinates me, which is probably what leads me to be a notorious evesdropper.

I'm not the kind of evesdropper that sneaks up on people, picks up another phone extension, or listens at keyholes, but if you are a stranger having a conversation at the next table in a restaurant, I'm probably listening in. Especially if it gets animated or emotional. The details of other people's lives intrigue me.

However, I'm the most compassionate evesdropper you'll ever meet. Like the other day when I was in the waiting room of the infertility treatment center. A woman hurried in obviously wrapped up in her own personal experience. She was a bit impatient and a little terse. I heard the woman at the front desk say, "Don't tell me you're having a bad day already." To which the woman responded, "Well, I started bleeding this morning, and I don't know what's going on..."

As she was rushed inside, I began to cry for her because as different as we may be, I understand her. I can relate to the fear and the disapointment. I can empathize with her journey of broken dreams. I wanted to hug her and say, "You are not alone."

Perhaps all this curiosity is, in fact, a search for the points of connections with everybody else on the planet. Maybe that's why this whole blogging thing has taken off. It allows us to take a glimpse of the world through someone else's eyes, and on a good day we can say, "Yeah, that's how I see it, too." Then we don't feel so alone. So to Suwanne and anyone else who has taken the time to see the world through my eyes for a minute, I thank you. I don't feel so alone either.