Friends of a moment.

There is a type of conversation that usually only occurs on an airplane or a train or in a long line, where two strangers talk about deep personal issues that would normally be reserved for close friends or family members. It is an extremely intimate, largely risk-free conversation because both parties have inwardly acknowledged that they will likely never see the other person again.

I had such a conversation today in the waiting room of a medical clinic. What I thought was a cold has turned into a full blown sinus infection, and my desperation to get well (and get rid of my eternal fever) took me into the local urgent care center.

While enduring my two hour wait to be seen, a girl around my age sat next to me. We talked about our various reasons for being among the afflicted. Naturally the conversation became more personal, and I learned that she has two kids, a husband with very little empathy, works at an adult foster home, and has two siblings that both recently moved to the East coast. We talked about her problems breast feeding and her struggle to get along with her in-laws. We joked about faking medical emergencies to get a bump toward the front of the line. We shared family histories and career aspirations.

And then my name was called. I left her with a fleeting “goodbye, good luck!” over my shoulder as I was herded toward the examination room by a brusque nurse in cheerful scrubs. That was it. We never even exchanged first names.

It left me wondering what to do with such an experience. Obviously part of the freedom of our conversation was that our relationship had predefined points of beginning and end. It would have been unnatural to try and further it as we had no real investment in each other’s lives outside of our coinciding maladies. But I think I have come to realize that there is value in even such a short-lived interaction. For the time that we sat and talked, we valued each other as human beings and affirmed the basic relational capacity that is present between any two people. I think that acknowledging a stranger’s unique personality is probably always healthier than pretending like they do not exist. That is why elevators are so uncomfortable. You are standing just close enough to others that you are forced to recognize their presence, but the ride is too brief to do anything about it.

So I look forward to my future friends-of-a-moment. Perhaps the relationships we share will be short-lived, but they will teach me things that I would never learn if I sat alone.