Its a Large World After All

“But there is probably someone out there just like me probably keeping to themselves” – The Front Bottoms

Tyler Barnes: awaiting trial for aggravated assault and a DUI.
Fredrick Jones: overdosed on heroin.
This is just a small sample of the people I have met in my 23 years of life. Statistically speaking we will all meet about 100,000 people in our lives, if we’re being generous. That is 100,000 out of about 10 billion people that will walk the Earth while we are here. That is .001% of the potential people in the world. That is crazy. The two mentioned before are wasting space inside my .001%. They could be replaced by charitable people that spend there time giving back to the community and working hard to improve the world. Instead, my life is wasted on the people that populate Central New Jersey, whether they are good or bad. This is the hand I have been dealt but I refuse to accept it.
Some people say the world is a small place; this is such a lie. Just because I went to high school with your cousin who lives thirty miles away from you does not make the world a small place. In fact, the world is 24,901 miles. Yeah, it is so strange that I went to school with your cousin. When there are people waking up and going to bed each night around the world that will never even stumble upon anything about either of us in the world. They won’t read what we write, they won’t see our picture and they will not talk to us in person, but it is great I went to school with your cousin. Someone just died, who could have made a significant impact on both of our lives, but now will never get the chance, but it is great I went to school with your cousin.
What if the person who can change my life in the best possible way is working at a gift shop in Spain right now and doesn’t speak English? What are the chances that I will meet them? Here is what I would have to do:
• Spend years learning Spanish.
• Fly to Spain.
• Go to the city that this person works in.
• Pick the right gift shop.
• Go on a day that they are working.
• Go to the shop during the hours they are at work.
• Hope that they do not have some sort of emergency that will take them away from work or withdraw their attention form a customer.
• Strike up a conversation. Become friends.
• Keep a relationship overseas.
That is all. Sounds easy right?
Next time you travel, stop at a rest area. As you stand in line, look at the person in front of you. Who are they? You will probably never know. You are just passing them like ships in the night. You’ll never run into them again, you both are just on your way to your destinations to your respective social circles that will never intersect. Sleep on that fact on your 22-hour car ride.
To fight this phenomenon, take time to get to meet people. Talk to that person in front of you leap out of the bound of that one-thousandth of a percent of people that you are destined to met. Write your own destiny. I will find that person in Spain no matter what, I expect you to do the same.