Beautiful strangers

There are beautiful connections you are entitled to form the minute you are born, those of parents, siblings, nearest kin etc but there are every bit as beautiful and surprisingly passionate, if not more, connections that you build through the course of life as well, with strangers from possibly anywhere in the world. Like forming a connection with a random traveller on a subway or shopper at a grocery store who, regardless of being surrounded by so many people, seems to be as lost as you are in their own little world. or a little random kid at a museum, who stares at ancient relics with as much curiosity and awe as you. or an excited kid at an amusement park, who laughs so unabashedly and vividly, as he goes from one ride to another, just like you would. or with a stranger at an airport of a completely different country, ethnicity as well as language from you, who cherishes the same love for books as you. or even with an old man who, undeterred by the restraints of his age, wakes up early everyday, just to sit in his garden and have his favorite cup of tea while going through the daily newspaper, to continue a ritual he became accustomed to perhaps 20-30 years ago. Isn’t it amazing, how we humans are born with this innate desire to form unanticipated yet profound connections wherever we go? We travel around subconsciously seeking potential similarities in whoever we see, at whatever place, and without expecting, finding through those similarities, the comfort of belonging. And when we find that - because in 7 billion people, it’s not that hard to find a person somewhat close to as mad or weird about little things as you are - you find yourself so overwhelmed with joy and a eerie feeling of peace that you feel like this was the only purpose you were here for: to form those warm, unprecedented connections with people you might never see again, but always carry in your hearts like little colorful pieces of grain, piling to fill that place inside you that is specially there for those very strangers: the people who without sharing a single word with you, so easily break into your seemingly restrained facades and find a home.