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While I typically use the April issue to talk about the gifts of spring or the celebration of Bealtane, the rites from which many of our modern May Day festivities originated, I felt instead drawn to a follow up on last month’s essay on the impact of micro-connections. Several of you reached out to share your own meaningful moments interacting with strangers. Thank you for those beautiful stories – they are an inspiration.
Shortly after writing last month’s essay describing the power of micro-connections, I had my own experience of their transformative nature after boarding a flight between Denver and New Orleans. This was at the height of the TSA shortage and many of my fellow passengers were beleaguered after waiting in long lines and dealing with some short tempers. I found myself grateful as I prepared to finally settle in for my two-and-a-half-hour flight. After about twenty minutes, I struck up a conversation with the young woman sitting in the chair beside mine who was on her way to her bachelorette party in New Orleans before getting married the following weekend. Her friends had booked seats toward the front of the plane and she craning her neck trying to see if she could locate them. She was clearly missing being with her friends on the way to their special weekend. The once dreaded two hours flew by (pardon the pun) as we discussed her wedding plans and she showed me photos of her dress and the wedding venue. I learned that she and her fiancé met at university in a Harry Potter class that he took for an easy A but ended up challenging him philosophically and introducing him to his future wife. We discussed our respective experiences in graduate school. Hers in criminology and justice. I learned about her family “out east” and their travel plans for the wedding, as well as her musings about how her fiancé was planning to comport himself at his stag party. My lovely seat mate educated me about the politics of redacting body camera evidence recoded by police officers, which is how she makes her living. She shared her hopes and dreams for her new marriage and told me of the house they are building together. I took pictures for her as the Southwest crew brought her a mock veil made of a paper crown and a garbage bag, inviting all passengers to wish her luck. She was a breath of fresh air. My once dreaded two-hour flight was suddenly filled with whimsy, laughter, and the infectious energy of someone on the precipice of a life altering event. As we parted, walking up the ramp from the plane to the gate, I wished her a beautiful wedding and a meaningful life. She laughed and said “I never even asked your name”. I think it was clear to both of us that names were unimportant and unnecessary to our connection, as was our political affiliation, our religion, our ideology… We just got to enjoy a brief glimpse into another life, the beauty and wonder of another human being. Louisa
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Every spring, as we start to come out of hibernation and return to outdoor activity, I am always surprised by the joy I feel as I casually encounter neighbors and strangers moving through my day-to-day routine. They may be walking their dogs, taking a stroll, or mowing their lawns, but there is always this gentle invitation to stop for a moment and exchange a few words.
These brief interactions are known as micro connections: the laughter shared with the person checking out your groceries, the gentle exchange when you ask for assistance at the hardware store, the chat with the gardener as you pass their house on your walk. These interactions are supremely valuable to our well-being though their importance is often discarded in favor of relationships with weightier and more decisive labels like “partner”, “child”, “parent”, or “friend”. While we may overlook the value of these small interactions, they can be quite pivotal in lightening our mood and reminding us that people are generally helpful and kind. My daughter shared a recent interaction when she had a delivery of a larger piece of furniture that was too difficult to move from the mailroom to her apartment several buildings away. Instead, she asked if she might unbox it in the mailroom and transport the individual pieces which were small enough for her to manage alone. She went on to recount how every person who entered the mail room as she went about this task asked about her endeavors and offered her some assistance. One kind couple carried her trash out to the dumpster, another took her recycling, and one man helped by taking the pieces to her apartment in a single trip with his truck. Some smiled or offered words of encouragement. These were small interactions that made my daughter’s large task more manageable without truly inconveniencing any one person who helped. Each small action creates a feedback loop that allows everyone to leave the interaction feeling more positive and connected. As the world becomes more solitary in the wake of the pandemic, we have lost many of these opportunities for social interactions. We may no longer have someone who checks out our groceries or a teller who deposits our checks. And we all have stories of the impersonal automated customer care calls that make human interaction (and assistance) nearly impossible. Herein lies the task… the invitation. As you go about your busy day, slow down a bit, take out your ear buds if you see a neighbor and greet them on your walk, offer a wave of gratitude to the driver that let you cut in in front of them, ask your mail carrier how their day is going, tell a stranger something you appreciate about them. You’ll be doing you both a mighty favor. “May you be rocked, as deeply as necessary and as gently as possible” ~Anonymous Louisa |
AuthorLouisa has always enjoyed writing and is thrilled that she now has a way to share her musings with a larger community of like-minded seekers. Her writing is often an extension and exploration of the struggles she faces in integrating her own spirituality, scholarly study, life experience, and nuggets of brilliance from her teachers in the hopes that it might alchemically transform itself into something approximating wisdom. Archives
June 2026
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