On chance encounters.

A few months back, I took a photo of my friend at a coffee shop downtown. Later when I posted it on Instagram, someone commented about how their friend was in the background of my shot. 

Do you ever stop and wonder how many photos you're in the background of?

How many strangers, while showing off their vacation albums to family and friends, see you in the background? Maybe they wonder where you are right now, what you're doing at this moment. 

These little glimpses of random passersby, of accidental memories trapped forever in someone else's photo, amaze me. 

I like to think of my life as a collection of these moments. A conglomerate of interactions I have with strangers who can become friends that then start to feel like family. And sometimes, if those snapshots don't fully develop, they fade away leaving a mere imprint on my mind of someone vaguely passing through. 

In my favorite book, Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, the young Oskar Schell goes on his own journey, making memories with a multitude of strangers that changes his life forever. And every time I get to the climax (I won't spoil it, so go read it now) without fail, I get chills. Because to me there's something remarkable about this raw, honest moment between two complete strangers finding one another. 

There's a memory I often turn to, when I reflect on my time spent in Ireland, of a solo hike I took one weekday afternoon. I trekked the 7km trail between Greystones and Bray for a few hours of solitude, enjoying the cliff side scenery, and in a moment of surprise stumbled upon a herd of horses. 

Horses on Bray Head (click to expand)

I also met a woman at the top of the mountain. We didn't speak, except for a casual nod of the head to acknowledge one another. But for ten minutes or so we stood silently atop the hillside, just feet away from the horses. I was breathless and overwhelmed by the horses' beauty, but also now, thinking back, I'm amazed by the brief moment I shared with that woman. 

Sometimes I wonder if she thinks about it, if she even remembers me or more often she recalls the sweeping manes of the horses and their strong limbs. How the huddled around with each other, chomping away at the mossy cliffside. How the wind swept up and they shook their tails. Then, how I huddled under my hood, and she under her umbrella, as the soft day turned to a heavier rain, and we shuffled off down the mountainside to take the train back into town. 

"My life story is the story of everyone I've ever met," Oskar's grandma says. And I've come to learn that even some of the seemingly insignificant moments of life can absorb you and spit you out a changed person, altered by the interaction with another human being, even if only for a short while.