Don't be a stranger

I was standing in Barnes & Noble this evening looking at journals. I've nearly finished a journal that I've been using all year, and I was on a quest to find that perfect journal. I'm very adamant about a particular way that my journals must look. They need to be the perfect size, material, style, etc. It's nearly a journey for me to find the perfect journal. I had nabbed up several of them. Two or three with owls. One with a scene of Paris. One with Jane Austen quotes in it. One with the Beatles on it. There were so many choices. Eventually I snagged the perfect one - it's made out of natural materials, the paper is handmade, and the bookmark has a button on the end. Schnazzy, artsy, perfect for me.
Even though I had already decided which one I wanted, I still stood in the section wishing I had the money to buy all the journals in there. As I was standing there, a girl looking about my age walked up. Expecting the usual "I'm better than you" attitude I usually get from teenage girls, I pretty much ignored her and continued looking at the beautiful shelves stacked one on top of the other filled with empty pages meant to be written on. But as I continued looking, I heard a voice next to me say, "I like that journal." I looked over at the girl standing next to me, and I agreed with her. Even this unusual human contact with a stranger who was a teenage girl, I expected that to be the only thing she said. I gave kind of a long reply saying that I really enjoyed journals and had been journaling since I was eight. She expressed an interest and said, "Oh me too!" I was surprised she gave much of a response. Usually small talk you have with people ends up being only a few sentences.
But before I knew it, we were deep in conversation. Stemming from our conversation on journals, she asked me what I was interested in doing when I went to college, and I said I wanted to major in English. She excitedly replied she did too. We went on to talk about college, where we wanted to go, what we wanted to do after college. Then we started talking about books, our favorite authors and books, etc. She also told me she was on a retreat with her youth group, and we talked about Christianity, our churches, and we even talked about how we had both been going through some tough things lately, and how different circumstances in our lives were helping us get through that. I was very impressed with her openness about her faith - most people, especially teenagers usually don't strike up a conversation and immediately start talking about their faith. Before I knew it, a 20 or 30 minute conversation had occurred and I felt like we were friends.
One thing that I love is meeting strangers. I'm not usually one to strike up a conversation with a stranger, unless it's a bit of small talk. But when someone does it with me, I love just talking with a stranger. Meeting someone new. As Walt Whitman once said, "Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? And why should I not speak to you?" It's just an interesting thought that the person you're standing next to in the bookstore, the person sitting behind you in a coffee shop, the person waiting next to you at the stoplight - all of these people could be so similar to you. In fact, they could be a future good friend of yours. One of my biggest pet peeves is people's tendency to hide away from other humans. To never open up. To act superior and to walk with their noses in the air to hide a sense of insecurity about them. Even I have a tendency to do that sometimes. I wish people would open up sometimes - try to meet new people and interact with others. You never know what you could do for a stranger by doing so.
Don't be a stranger!

"A stranger is just a friend I haven't met yet."

-Will Rogers