No Degrees Of Separation

I think of them as familiar strangers. You have them too, different ones. They’re the people you see regularly but don’t know. They’re in your grocery store. They drive to work along the same route you take, though you may only recognize the bumper stickers and not the faces. They’re regulars in your Starbucks, or at that little place you like for lunch. For me, it’s the folks at my gym(s), we say hello when we see each other elsewhere, but in the gym we’re strangers.

Life is a balance between the known and the unknown, the familiar and the new. Too much of the same thing and we go stir crazy, but too much newness can put pressure on our coping mechanisms. This is true of our work, our play, our food--- and our relationships.

Technology factors in. Strangers read my gripes, paeans and haiku on Twitter several times a day. I don’t know everyone reading this now. I still tweet my soul and blog my guts out indiscriminately. Conversely, I lower my voice when discussing anything remotely proprietary in the gym. There are strangers, and then there are strangers.

For all that, I’m still startled when someone I recognize as a regular but don’t know says “Hello, Carole” to me in the gym. It happened again yesterday. I wonder if she knows Kevin Bacon.