I meant to write about my airport adventures last week as I was returning to LA from the holidays, but I apparently forgot to. Two of the things I like the least in this world are flying and talking to people I don't know. They're right up there after needles and spiders. {cringes} So when my plans necessitate hopping aboard an airplane the last thing you'll see me doing is striking up conversation with the person seated next to me. Just doesn't happen. And generally the other people keep to themselves as well. Not so this time around. Four people talked to me. Four! That's completely unheard of in my world. And that's okay, they were all very nice, but it definitely shoved me out of the realm of comfortable silence. The odd thing is I wonder how all those people are doing now. Did the one lady enjoy her trip to Las Vegas where she was meeting up with her sisters? Did the couple from Oklahoma enjoy their time in northern LA county? Has the girl bound for a missions trip to Australia made a difference? I will never know the answer to these questions, unless by some clever plan of God we cross paths again. Does the not knowing matter? What's the use of that brief investment in someone else's life if you can't ever follow up on it? Is there a greater point or is it all just meaningless interaction?
I hope your rambles have been sweet and your reveries spacious. - Emily Dickinson
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As far as the point of the small investment in someone's life, I think it was Dean Trune who recently spoke at Kingsway about encounters he had on airplanes. He has a practice, unlike me, where he asks the single serving friends that he meets how he can pray for them. In one case he ended up making a good friendship with someone that he didn't even realize attended the same church as him (he is gone a lot for travels). In another case he gave hope to a woman whose family member was the victim of a very tragic and very public murder/death of some kind. The salient details escape me. I'm not really that comfortable asking people if I can pray for them or anything like that, but I'd like to think that just the idea that someone else is interested in your life helps you feel like your world is a little bit bigger. It's not just you travelling alone to a place where your future may seem small. It's knowing that you had a friendly encounter and that if you ever break down in L.A. or Oklahoma or wherever, maybe - just maybe the person who drives up to help you won't be an axe murderer. It will be a single serving friend. But even if you never meet again, it's nice to know that you could meet up with someone else who is trying to get somewhere too.
I think all the "return-on-investment" happens in the investment itself. Because really, they're "investing" in you too.
And I like it when people think I'm worth something.