It’s amazing what happens when we take the time to chat with someone new. We were at an Independence Day family party near Divide, Colorado and there were a few neighbors attending whom I had never met before. Turns out that one gentleman had grown up near Rochester N.Y. – my hometown! That was coincidence enough to keep us talking for quite some time as we reminisced about familiar landmarks, schools and streets.
It’s not unusual for me to stumble upon someone who grew up or lived in Rochester. After all, it IS the home of Eastman Kodak, Bausch & Lomb, Xerox and a number of other large businesses. Kodak has a plant up north of Denver which typically brings a number of transplants to Colorado and once they get a taste of the low humidity out here, a number of them decide to stay!
So the party proceeded….
At the end of the evening, I again got into conversation with the same gentleman. He mentioned his son, so I asked a bit more such as where he worked, etc. When he told me the organization and I asked him to repeat his son’s name, I couldn’t believe the coincidence. His son was one of my clients! He had hired me to do management training for his team last year.
Now, that’s not such an unusual occurrence. It happens to people more often than you might think. So what? What’s the benefit of having had that conversation and made that discovery other than a few “feel good” moments between strangers?
Well, first, it IS worthwhile to have those feel good moments and establish rapport with people. We all need to feel like we’re part of a greater community – that some things do make sense – that we’re not as isolated as we might sometimes believe.
Second, these folks are friends of family and now they feel a bit more like part of my family. Perhaps next time we meet, we’ll discover more things in common and some ways we might be able to help one another out. It could be something as simple and uneventful as sharing the name of a good auto repair person. It could be something bigger and more impactful.
It certainly establishes a better bond between their son and myself. While he’s moved out of the area to another job, that doesn’t mean folks don’t find ways to reconnect in the future. Perhaps I’ll have a job lead for him sometime down the road or maybe we’ll be able to do business together again despite his new location.
It reinforces to me how valuable it is to extend oneself to people you meet in social or business settings. Here are a few more coincidences I’ll share:
I had dinner a few weeks back with my boyfriend’s co-worker who had flown out from the corporate office in Baltimore, MD. It took us 5 minutes to discover that she had grown up in Webster NY (also near Rochester) and knew of my cousin who was an alumni from the same high school.
I met a childhood friend of my grandmother’s at the top of Lookout Mountain near Denver CO about 14 years ago. We were the only people at Mother Cabrini’s Shrine and just struck up a conversation. In the end, her husband took our photo together and I sent it back with the story to my Grandmother before she passed away. She said it was one of the happiest moments of her last years to know that her granddaughter and very best friend had found each other way out in Colorado!
I’m sure you have your own stories also. I’d love to read them, so please DO post a comment. You don’t need to share names of course, but definitely share your stories!
Writing from waaay out in Colorado, Laura
