Don't I Know You From Somewhere?

I walked into the bar area of a local restaurant to see my dear friend sitting at a table for two. I was looking forward to our pre-arranged dinner date. My friend is about as cherished as they come. It had been a while since we talked, and I was looking forward to catching up with her on the comings and goings of our lives.

Soon after we greeted one another, another woman entered the bar area and sat at a table for two right next to us. Due to the proximity of the table arrangement, we couldn’t help but greet her with a smile. My friend looked at her, she looked at my friend and they both said in tandem. “I know you from somewhere.”

And so began the tracking. Where abouts do you live? Hmm…. Have we met through our kids? Did you grow up in this area? Where did you go to school? Do your kids play sports? And so on, and so on.

Then the woman’s husband arrived and we began the search for common ground all over again. “Hmmm….Romer,” he said after I told him my name. Are you related to this Romer or that Romer? Soon enough, we were laughing and sharing cross table conversations as if we’d known one another all our lives; yet we’d only just met.

Then, I noticed two men sitting at the next table over. Let’s call this Table Number 3. I leaned over and directed my question to one of the men that looked familiar. “I think we’ve met.” I said to him. Our bonding chatter was now three tables deep. I came to discover that yes, we had met; and yes, I remembered he was my husband’s former colleague. My friend and I at Table Number 1, the “I know you from somewhere” couple at Table Number 2, and the “I think we’ve met” man at Table Number 3 became fast friends. We laughed at all the random associations we had in common discovered by the initial act of sharing smiles. We even took a group photo.

Given the opportunity to meet other people outside of your usual repertoire brings an opportunity to learn something new. Conversations with people you meet (even if you think you’ve met them before) might offer different perspectives, appreciation for different life journeys, and delight in sharing. Sometimes it just fun to hear another person’s story.  This is where our social correlations breed discovery and expanded community.

In my experience, the act of sharing smiles creates a magnetic field. Sometimes we meet those that only like to talk about themselves. Other, more delightful times we meet random people who like to ask questions. Without getting too existential, there’s plenty of capacity for connection with simply wondering out loud, “Have we met?”

My response to such a question is yes, we have met. Surely, the expansive occurrences of life mean that we have probably met somewhere along the way, even if it is simply through the understanding and compassion for common life experiences.

My dinner date with my dear friend offered a small vignette into how fun it can be to bond with others. We share humanity, after all. Most of us seek joy, we love to laugh about silly things, and we love it when we dig deep enough to realize that yes, we are connected. My guess is we all share varied degrees of hardships we must navigate, so whenever the time arises when we can share smiles between the tables, it’s a good thing.