Things I Learned From Strangers

Things I Learned From Strangers

You don't realize it at the time. Not in the moment when your hands brush while passing a cup of coffee, or when a stranger on a park bench tells you something profound, unsolicited and unplanned. But if you live long enough — or pay close enough attention — you'll find that the people you never knew are sometimes the ones who shape you the most.

I started making a list years ago, scrawled in the back pages of my notebooks and the notes app of my phone. Tiny moments with strangers. Fleeting connections. Glimpses of wisdom from people whose names I never asked for, but whose words never left me.

The Cab Driver in Chicago

I was twenty-four, reckless, and chasing something I couldn’t name in a city I barely knew. It was winter. One of those nights when the snow piles on the sidewalks and everything feels like it’s underwater. I climbed into a cab after an argument with a boyfriend I knew I should’ve left months before.

The driver was an older man, maybe in his sixties, with kind eyes and a radio tuned to some scratchy jazz station. I must’ve looked like hell because he glanced at me through the rearview mirror and asked, “You alright, miss?”

I shrugged.

He didn’t press. Just kept driving until, out of nowhere, he said, “You know, you don’t owe anyone your suffering.”

It hit me like a brick. The clarity of it. No pep talk. No lecture. Just a quiet permission to leave the things that hurt. I didn’t know his name, but I carried that line for years like a talisman.

The Waitress in Atlanta

Fast forward five years. I was sitting alone at a diner in Atlanta, eating blueberry pancakes at 2 a.m. because my flight was canceled and the hotel room felt too empty. The waitress brought me my coffee and asked if I wanted whipped cream. I said sure.

When she set the plate down, she said, “My mama used to say you can’t control the storm, but you can choose your rain boots.”

I laughed. She smiled.

It was silly, but somehow it was exactly what I needed to hear at that hour in a city where no one knew me. She never knew it, but that line became my mantra whenever life came apart.

The Man at the Bus Stop

There was a man once — grizzled beard, clothes a little too thin for the December cold — who sat beside me at a bus stop in Minneapolis. I was twenty-nine, trying to make sense of a job I hated and a life that felt like someone else’s.

He struck up a conversation about the snow. I don’t remember his face so much as his voice, a kind of gravelly warmth. At one point, he gestured to the snow piling around us and said, “Some people spend their whole lives waiting for the sun. Me, I learned to dance in this.”

I didn’t know what to say. I think I just nodded. But later, sitting on that freezing bus, I wrote it down.

The Anonymous Letter

Two years ago, I found a note tucked into a library book. It was written in loopy handwriting on a torn piece of notebook paper.

“Dear you,

If you’re reading this, maybe you needed to.

You are enough. Even on the days you feel invisible.

Even when you screw up.

Even when you don’t believe it.

Somebody out there is glad you exist.”

No name. No explanation. Just a lifeline from a stranger who would never know me. I kept that note. I folded it into my wallet, and every so often, when the world felt too sharp, I’d read it like a prayer.

The Woman on the Plane

Last year, somewhere over the Atlantic, I sat beside a woman in her seventies with sharp cheekbones and a laugh like wind chimes. She told me about the places she’d seen and the people she’d loved.

When the conversation drifted to regrets, she said, “The biggest mistake people make is assuming they have time.”

She told me to book the trip, write the letter, tell the truth.

I think about her often. How a seven-hour flight with a stranger changed the way I counted my days.

What Strangers Taught Me

I used to think wisdom came from people who knew you best. From parents, teachers, old friends. But some of the most important things I’ve learned came from faces I barely remember.

A line from a cab driver. A phrase from a waitress. A scrap of paper in a book. A conversation on a bus bench. Moments without expectation, free of judgment.

Tiny kindnesses. Small truths.

And now, I try to leave my own behind. A smile. A compliment. A quiet word to a stranger who looks like they need it. Because you never know who’s carrying a notebook, or a cracked-open heart, just waiting to be reminded they’re not alone.

Even by someone they’ll never see again.