Slowing Down For Strangers
By: Megan Minutillo
Tags: Kindness, Empathy, Life Lessons, Self-awareness, Mindfulness

Slowing Down For Strangers

Photo by Max Nayman on Unsplash

Recently, we got a bit of snow — and by a bit of snow, I mean our backyard looks something like Narnia.

We are new homeowners, and while I have a fridge full of cheese cured meats, we do not have things like snowmelt for our driveway. Priorities, I suppose.

My husband went to the local hardware store to get some and returned home with snowmelt and a story of an odd encounter.

He was pulling out of the parking lot, and a man knocked on his car window. My husband was sitting in the driver’s seat and rolled the window down to see what he needed. The stranger asked him about our car, and if he liked it. He offered up how his father had recently purchased the same car, but a different year. He offered up a few more details and then told my husband to have a good day and walked away.

At first, the New Yorker in me thought there was some angle.

Did he ask you where we lived? Did he ask you for your name? Was he trying to sell you something? Get something? Give you something?

No, said my husband. He just wanted to talk about the car.

Odd.

The thought of that stranger striking up a random conversation with my husband while he was in a car that was ready to leave the parking lot stayed with me all day. What was the story there?

Later on that evening, I turned on the Christmas lights of our home and wondered if that man who wanted to chat in the parking lot had Christmas lights of his own. Or better yet, did he have someone to share them with? Was there someone to talk to as the snow fell and the lights twinkled? Someone to share a hot meal with as winter swirled outside of all of our windows?

The winter holiday season can be a beautiful time full of joy and hope and love and laughter, but it can also feel incredibly lonely for some. For some, it can seem as if the whole world is buzzing with delight, and you are merely watching from afar, removed from the warmth of a fire and the hum of laughter. For far too many, it can feel as if they’re standing in the darkness while the rest of the world is bathing in the glow of the lights.

Too often, we forget that not everyone can share in our joy.

Too often, we forget that sometimes while someone seems alright on the surface, they’re carrying a load of hurt within their heart and a lifetime of stories within their bones.

Too often, we forget that it costs absolutely nothing to be kind to another human — to stop and listen to their story, if only for a moment.

The heart of humanity beats with the desire to be seen, heard, and loved.

Sometimes we are blessed to get that from the people in our lives — friends and family, and the ones we break bread with regularly. Other times it comes from strangers we meet briefly — in places like coffee shops and sun-soaked diners and the parking lot of your local hardware store.

Either way, I hope you don’t shy away from the people who are right in front of you.

I hope you listen to their stories, and hold their hearts gently, and treat each person with the tenderness you’d hope to be met with, too.