“Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow
Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead
Walk beside me… just be my friend”
― Albert Camus
In a world that feels like we are fracturing into pieces, and conversations that focus more on difference than commonality, I had a refreshing experience, which reminded me that people are people and we have more in common than we have differences; and that those differences can make us very interesting to each other if we remain open.
Let me share how I rediscovered this important life lesson.
In my lifetime, I have had the great opportunity to live in many different places. In my teens, I was a foreign exchange student to Sydney, Australia. So far away from my familiar that it took a letter six weeks to arrive and six more to return. I was welcomed and became family and broadened deeply by the experience, so much so, that it stays with me today. Though I had let go of my high school friends whom I thought I could not live without, I made friends again and found a place to fit in in The Land Down under.
During college I yearned for another experience to stretch my comfort level and expand my horizon, so I spent a long semester in Liverpool, England. Whenever you are thrust into a new environment it tests your ability to know who you are and choose relationships with people with whom you will have shared values. Everyone is new, different, and as curious about you as you are about them. You learn how to make friends again and again and again. And also how to represent who you want to be with others.
After college, and a few years of work, my best high-school buddy and I committed a year to backpack around the world. She found the around-the-world plane ticket and I the Euro and Britrail passes. With twenty dollars budgeted for each day to find a place to stay, eat, and tour, we practiced many of the skills that I would need later in life when I selected self-employment as my path. We navigated public transportation, found safe accommodations, walked the streets of cities around the world, and met friendly people everywhere we went. We were hosted in their homes, stayed in contact, and even were invited to a wedding. It was in this grand experience that I really came to trust that the world is a very small place and people are kind, open, and generous everywhere.
I have held on to that belief for the whole of my life. It gives me confidence to walk into a room of strangers and travel to new places to work for people I have yet to come to know. It is a competency that I couldn’t live without. I think I need it as much today as I did when I was in my 20s and 30s.
Making friendships with every experience has become a way of life. I have traveled to Sweden for work and play many times in the last twenty-plus years because of a Swedish-American confab planned in New York City (during the 1996 blizzard) that resulted in friends and colleagues for life. A work trip to Barcelona resulted in a friendship and collaboration. And the experiences compile.
A new friendship has blossomed in my life that was unplanned and unexpected. While sitting in shallow water having just spent an hour snorkeling in Kauai a youngish gentleman asked me where I had secured my snorkel gear. Without removing my mask I answered his questions and off he went. But not without asking what I saw underwater. He was courteous and I was helpful. It was a brief but nice encounter.
The next day on the opposite end of the island, I was less-than-gracefully making my way out of the water in fin and gear when through my mask I saw his familiar face. He smiled and I smiled (the universal language) and he proudly held up his newly acquired snorkel gear. I did the funny fin walk out of the water and happily shared how good the snorkeling was at Poi’pu beach. It was ten minutes of catching up and being amazed at the coincidental second meeting before we even introduced ourselves. My new friend Dhruva did not have a snorkel buddy so I encouraged him into the water and was his safety friend from the beach. When he emerged after having had a great experience seeing fish of all types and sizes, we spent more time learning about each other. We discovered that we would be on the same planes going home and would share a six hour layover in Oahu. It was then that our plan to explore together was hatched. Dhruva and I spent our time in Honolulu eating local food and bowling (as this is what many Hawaiians do on Sundays). It was the perfect way to end an extraordinary vacation. We travelled all the way to Chicago together where we parted ways with appreciation.
Dhruva is good at staying in contact and I like to be connected as well. We talk once a week, text funny pictures, and make new plans to travel together. He is also a consultant in technology working for one of the big companies. He reminds me so much of me in my younger years as I started my career. He reminds me of things I still want to do and be in my life. This chance meeting of an Indian transplant to the U.S. is just another example of how we have more in common than we have that is different.
I want to use my generous curiosity and desire to understand people, especially those I meet in my travels, to enrich my everyday relationships and those that seem to be polarized. The differences we have in our religious or political views don’t erase the common ground we have as people. I seek the common ground.
• Have you had these kinds of friendship? Experiences? What has it taught you?
• What can you do to bridge difference and create common ground in your working and life relationships?
• What are the biggest lesson that you have learned along the way that help you every day?
Leslie
“Friendship … is born at the moment when one man says to another
“What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
