Snagging Connections: How to live like a piece of Velcro.

For my entire life, I've felt like someone outside of the scope of human experience. I have always had the nagging sensation that my life is atypical in some way, an exception to the rule that every person is fundamentally similar. As I've gotten older, I believe that less and less. My perceived differences, which I felt made me something other than human, are not quite as strange as I originally thought. My sexuality, for instance, which I often believed as an adolescent was a symptom of this inhuman nature, is now known to me as being just another trait. I am not the only person on the planet that feels the way I do, and I am not any less human because of it. The same can be said of my body. If I were being humorous, I would say that I'm a small badger of a man, a shrunken angry wreck, barely able to contain my own rage at being too short to reach anything above six feet, but even this is not as uncommon as I once believed. My experience of awkwardly asking someone for help grabbing something at the store is not an embarrassment in my life these days, it is just my reality, and one that I share with a very solid percentage of the population. In the same vein, I am unlikely to be the only person in a room of men that is attracted to men. Neither of these things are as unusual as my insulated and shameful childhood would have led me to believe. 

All around me, at any given moment of the day, are dozens of people that share one trait with me. One is all it really takes. The human mind is remarkable at creating "in-groups" with others, and something as small as ordering the same drink at a coffeeshop will endear two souls. It's strange and oddly comforting, knowing that someone around you shares one trait, even if the trait is as simple as having the same taste in music. 

Small talk, I believe, is an exercise in swaying a bundle of small pieces of yourself in the water, waiting for those around you to grab onto one that catches their eye. "How about that weather?" We are experiencing the same weather. Isn't it remarkable that our location is the same, at the same time, in the same circumstance? The weather isn't the real point of the conversation, it's simply a thread of common life that you dangle, another person grasps, and you both marvel at the act of not free-floating. It's a conversational life preserver, one that says, "I'm here, you're here, and I see you. We have something in common."

"It's a shame that store closed." The store isn't important. It doesn't even matter if you know what the other person is referring to, the beauty comes in the shared simple sorrow of something no longer existing. It is a shame the store closed, and although I had never been there, I have experienced the loss of a small pleasure before. We have that in common. 

Today, while I was taking photos of a leaf-footed insect for my naturalist portfolio, a young man stopped to look at it with me. He cooed and smiled at it, and enthusiastically told me about something he had seen recently. "I was talking to someone here the other day, and do you see that tree over there?" He pointed to a nearby juniper. Yes, I did see it. "A caterpillar was pulling its cocoon right up the trunk!" Ah, he's grabbed my thread. Small talk about an interesting bug has prompted a story. This is the mark of a successful interaction. We chatted about how amazing the world of insects is for a few more moments, and then we both continued on our way. For a brief moment, we were the same, a cluster of individuals with a shared experience. It didn't matter that the experience was the act of watching a leaf-footed insect slowly trundle across the sidewalk. This microcosm had bonded us, even if it was only for a second.

When I have a conversation like this, it grounds me. These little connections seem like nothing, and in the grand scheme of things, they really aren't, but snagging a brief moment in someone's life reminds me that I am here, I am alive, I have more in common with everyone else than I might think I do while I'm alone, and the same can be said of everyone around me.