The Fruits of a Rare, Chance Meeting

Over the past 3 days I’ve had a rare experience that to be quite honest isn’t something that happens to me a great deal. 

Let me start by saying that I love communication. This magical ability is something that I find extraordinary. The simple fact that us humans have the ability to share our ideas, observations, feelings, beliefs is astounding. The reality that communication is such a potent tool that connects us to the living things around us, people, plants and animals is a miracle that is so easy to take for granted, it can inspire you to greater heights, enhanced survival, stronger purposes and overall a greater understanding of existence. It can help you to change your habits and behaviour, feel justified in choosing a course in life or just simply feel good about being alive, then there is your communication with yourself and even your own body and to top it off there is your never ending interaction with your  environment and nature.

Communication is a skill that can be learned and improved. 

Enough of that for now, more later. What I want to write about now is another aspect of communication.

There are 2 distinct camps of people. Those that are “interested” and those that are “interesting”. What am I talking about?

Have you ever run into a person who just talks about themselves and their own interests and hardly ever asks you about yourself or for that matter doesn’t even seem to be aware that you exist! This is the extreme version of an “interesting person”. Then occasionally somebody asks you about you or your viewpoints and slowly draws out titbits about yourself that you might not even realise were there. These people are rarer and from my own experience you normally tend to find the experience quite rewarding and you also tend to have a greater affinity for the person who is expressing a genuine interest in you.

I try really hard to fit into the second camp although I’m not always successful and sometimes blabber about myself a bit too much.

So after all of that verbosity here’s my experience.

It happened last Sunday morning as I was running up a very steep staircase at Bingin Beach on the Bukit Peninsular. We were going to be eating a bigger lunch than normal so I decided that a brisk walk and a bit of intense exercise might be a good way to start the day. My current goal is to improve my overall health, fitness, and strength in order to get full value out of my remaining years so I can pursue adventure, discovery and generally enjoy every moment of life. This is hard work but I really get great pleasure out of it which is a bonus.

Half way up the stairs with music blaring in my ears to help push me on I became aware of loud voices and clapping. I looked up and saw 2 men standing on the steps above me, goading me on, apparently getting great pleasure out of watching an old grey haired man exerting himself so I stopped, took my earbuds out and started talking to them. Here’s the catch line, They were genuinely interested in me, what I was doing, why I was doing it, how old I was, what my viewpoints on health and fitness were, what my background story was. We probably spent about 10 minutes talking, maybe less but I left feeling great. Feeling that somebody else was interested in my well being and existence. I instantly felt a great affinity for both of them and hoped that we would run into each other again before I left to return to Ubud where our home in Bali is situated. After this chance encounter I felt genuinely invigorated and shoved my earphones back in, turned up the music and ploughed to the top of the stairs and walked back to the villa still feeling great.

By chance I did run into them again at a restaurant that was close by the villa we were staying at. I spotted them in the distance with a younger couple and went across to chat with them, my wife Georgie came across and sat down and something else very interesting happened. They expressed the same interest in her as they had in me. We spent about 45 minutes at the table chatting, sharing viewpoints and generally having a great time. On the way back Georgie expressed her viewpoint on the experience and had independently come to the same conclusion that I had. She liked them both a lot and wanted to stay in touch.

That is the power of being “interested” in another human being. I had run into 2 very special people by chance or maybe it was the universe drawing us together. I am rarely on the receiving end of this level of “interest”. Quite often I am so busy asking people I meet about themselves, trying to get them to talk about their lives, their ideas, their children, what music they like …. whatever. I often leave the communication without them asking one question about me. Which by the way, is OK.

What was strengthened by this experience is that one of the greatest gifts you can offer to another person is to acknowledge their existence and to express a genuine interest in them and their life.

A simple but powerful lesson.