Somewhere On a Place Called Earth

It's funny, isn't it? How we see so many new faces everyday and never learn names to go with them. How we see them once and then never again. How we think about them one single time when they hand us our drink at Starbucks or sit next to us on the bus but we never think of them after that. It's funny how there are so many people in this world and it's funny that the guy you sat next to on the bus the other day might be a friend of a friend of a friend, but you'll never know. And you probably won't see him again and even if you do, you won't recognize him and it'll be just like seeing another new, unfamiliar face without a name.

In the world there is a continent called Europe. In Europe, there's a country called Ireland. In Ireland, a city called Dublin. In Dublin, a street called Dawson Street. On Dawson Street, a Starbucks. In that Starbucks, a small patio, only large enough to accommodate three small, round tables situated in a kind of triangle. In that Starbucks on a bright sunny day, there was me. I bought my venti iced caramel macchiato and my slice of banana bread and, looking out at the sun, decided to sit outside. I put on my sunglasses, hiding my eyes, and sat down, giving off a cool, indifferent air. I was sitting on on of those round tables on the patio in Starbucks on Dawson Street in Dublin in Ireland in Europe on the earth and so were two other people on the two other tables. One was a man wearing a bright scarf and carrying a purse designed for a woman. I would have bought it if I had seen it in a store but alas, it was his and he was rocking it. On the other table, a woman with sunglasses and as much Apple technology as she could handle. She was wearing a headscarf and talking in Arabic on an iPhone while drinking what looked to be her second coffee. There was no doubt about the fact that we were as different as people could be. We would never be friends, as much as I liked his purse or her super nifty laptop case, and this would be the only time we would ever see each other. They each have their own circle of friends and I have mine and our circles will never overlap. But there we were, out of billions of people on this earth, sitting together in a tiny Starbucks on Dawson Street.

One by one we each got up to leave, never once smiling or making eye contact with each other. The man Instagrammed a picture of his coffee cup and the girl kept typing on her computer and I kept watching them and wondering who they were. Thankfully I had my sunglasses, otherwise they would have seen me watching and they would have been creeped out. Who knows where they are now, or what they're doing? We shared that little patio and now we'll be going to our own corners of the world without ever thinking of that patio again. It's a funny thing, isn't it? How many opportunities we have to reach out and befriend people of all different nationalities and types. How many opportunities we never take because we want to stay safe in our own little universe. How many people we probably won't see again and even if we do, we won't recognize them and it'll be just like seeing another new, unfamiliar face without a name.