While I was standing in the local tool shop today, I shared with the lovely men working there that I needed help fixing some things in my house. I started talking to the man next to me and he offered to help me. Just two minutes later we were in my house, sharing time and chatting about life while he was drilling holes in my wall to hang a mirror. At some point he shared that he was surprised that he was telling all these things about his personal life to a stranger.
I had to go back to the shop to borrow an electric screwdriver and when I got back, I shared with him that his words had stayed with me.
“You know what,” I said, “For me there is no such thing as strangers. I want to be open and be myself with everybody, even if I have just met them. I don’t feel there should be a difference. If there is then I ask myself, and feel, what I am projecting onto that other person that I am not being as open with.”
I pondered on this a little bit more during my day.
Why do we see people as strangers and what kind of effect does this have on our ability to connect with each other? Even the word ‘stranger’ carries a distance in it, where it feels strange, or even odd, that I could not allow myself to be fully open with that person, just because I have never met them before.
When we meet somebody for the first time, at times we have this tendency to hold back, to be reserved, maybe to judge the other by his or her appearance, how he/she acts or behaves and how he/she responds to us. Do we protect ourselves because we don’t know the other person? For me as a woman, I might hold back with a man that I have never met before and who is in my house, helping me hang up my mirror on the wall.
I chose to not hold back because it felt lovely to have this man in my house. Does this mean that I would invite anybody into my house? No, it doesn’t, because that wouldn’t be honouring of myself. The thing is I felt a connection and trust with the man at the shop from the first moment I met him and therefore I did not see him as a stranger.
For me there is no such thing as strangers, as we are all connected. Everybody is equal, regardless of where we come from, what we do, or the way we look. We are all one and the same within, each one of us, with unique qualities and talents. We all make different choices, yes, and we may live a thousand miles apart, but to me we are all one big family.
Knowing this, with every person I meet I can make the choice to meet them as loved family members or if I do hold back and find myself judging or thinking that I cannot say this or that or be this or that, then I know that I have allowed in the false idea of the stranger, the idea that I have to be different with certain people and that I cannot be open and loving with those that I meet for the first time.
It feels very freeing to be in life like this and to share myself and my love with everyone.
Now my mirror and paintings are hanging on the wall and it feels wonderful. Not only because they are finally hanging, but also because I was open to connecting and had invited someone into my home who helped me a great deal with something I could never have done on my own.
Taking the ‘old’ belief of the ‘stranger’ out of my life more and more, allows me to be more open, spontaneous, joyful and deeply connected with everybody and this feels great. I am now connecting more to all of humanity – I see the whole of humanity as my family! GREAT!
Every day I meet new people, chat with somebody on the street, in a shop, in the gym, at work or in the tram, say hello to people in the park, make eye contact, ask the supermarket assistant how she is doing, ask my neighbour for support when needed, give a compliment to somebody or start a conversation. I feel more connected with all those around me, close by and far away.
This blog is inspired by Universal Medicine and all those gorgeous people out there in the world that I meet every day.
By Mariette Reineke, Holland
Further Reading:
The simplicity of true intimacy
Heaven’s Joy – Deep Connection
A Feeling of Connection
850 Comments
The word “stranger” is an interesting one… a stranger is only a stranger or not known when the element and quality of love isn’t there… because immediately when there is love there’s also the warmth of openness that closes what we would call any strangeness. In love is carried a knowingness.
Mariette, I just love your openness. Its very inspiring. Meeting people in this way offers them permission to be themselves and so there is an ease in which they feel they can open up to another, even if they have only just met.
Very young children are taught ‘stranger danger’ which puts up barriers between people instead of teaching them to discern the energy they feel in anyone they meet.
When you see the word – stranger – it seems to carry the connotation that even though it is someone you have never met, you’d better be careful just in case they are not someone who you actually want to get to know or someone a little weird, or unusual. But as you have beautifully shared, there are no strangers, just another wonderful member of our human family who you have yet to connect with, and once you do you may be delightfully surprised.
By labelling someone with the title of stranger we are in fact denying the love we all are and the love we come from. And not alone that, such labelling reveals to us that we are expressing individuality, which stems from our heartless mind rather than from the all-encompassing love which flows from our inner heart.
I’ve often noticed this- the equality and the connection with others where ‘strangers’ feel like close friends, when travelling, but now I have this feeling more often in my day to day, too. At work, on the train, in shops.. every moment holds the potential for connection, and the depth of that depends on how connected we’re feeling with ourselves.
In and with love there are no strangers. We can however be strangers to love, and in this disconnection we have lost sense of our inter-connectivity we innately share with each other and the awareness of the truth that at our core we are all one and the same, unified by the love we are in essence.
I had a beautiful role model in my father as to the fact that there is ‘no such as strangers” for wherever we went it wouldn’t take long before he was talking to someone that I didn’t know and it usually turned out that up to that moment he didn’t know them either. He had such an easy and affable way about him and from treating everyone as an equal the reflection he shone to others always had them smiling in a very short space of time. It was so inspiring to see and to feel and so it naturally became a normal in my life too.
Mariette I enjoyed reading about you and your life in your bio – very cute! Great to read about your ability to let people in, to view everyone as family and be your same open self with all. It’s a simple way to be because we don’t change ourselves at all, but allow the same openness with everyone and share ourselves in full.
I totally know what you are talking about Mariette, when you meet someone and you have an instant connection with them. In the past I would have said I have it stronger with some people and not with others. I have come to realise that this is not actually true. I feel the connection with the person, looking past what they present to me and actually looking behind to see the true beauty that is equal to all those around us.
Since attending Universal Medicine presentations and workshops I am much less protected and now chat with lots of ‘strangers’. I was in London last week and had to take a taxi. Chatting with the cab driver we arrived eventually at what I thought was the house number on the correct road, but it wasn’t -(my mistake.) Luckily the road I needed was only a few streets away and he offered to take me there without charge. He hadn’t wanted to leave me at the wrong place as I was nearly late for an appointment. I felt very grateful and of course gave a large tip, which he said he didn’t want…… Connecting with people is not only fun but can be very useful!!
I love the simple hello that comes with eye contact with another person, in that moment so much is exchanged, there is a warmth joy and a knowingness that we are part of each other as one humanity.
Sometimes meeting with strangers can make my day, when we meet someone new we are seeing another reflection of God.
When we are open, this then gets reflected back to us by how people relate to us. Recently, I was on the tube, and five people unrelated to each other got on and off the tube after having started a conversation with me. It was amazing to have this occur because people don’t speak on the tube as a rule. It’s a very unnatural environment and it feels like the level of humanities checking out is amplified in those moments. You cannot help but notice.
I love this blog – it’s all about the importance of connecting to people, for in people we have gold. The connection is pure magic.
A great marker for me of being open is do I allow myself eye contact with another. Not a staring competition but if I look my customers in the eyes or people I pass on the street it tells me where I am open and/or not.
Thank you Mariette, that is very inspirational. To feel that you as you openly meet everyone as your equal brother and sister. I love that. I am going to pay attention to this in my life.
When we see another in equalness and offer them this, our movements af fears and beliefs fall by the wayside.