The Kindness of Strangers by Tom (Southeast Nomad)
Shellie and Tom, two of our Southeast Nomads, sharing breakfast and talking about life on the road with Diana, a student from UVA.
In our normal lives, talking to strangers is…well…strange. It’s unusual to share a table with somebody at Starbucks and strike up a conversation. The first thing that comes to mind is usually, “what do they want from us?” But on tour, we often rock up to somebody’s house to stay the night even if we have little in common. And you know what? That’s an amazing thing. Learning the kindness of strangers has been one of the best things about this wild journey.
A café we went to in D.C. had flags that you could put on your table and these would invite strangers to sit with you. At first it seemed odd, but it shouldn’t have. What do you have in common with strangers? More than you might think! We’ve learned this by going out to dinner with people we met just 10 minutes before, and these are often some of the best times we have on tour.
Being a Nomad brings you together with people from all over North America. It gives you something to share with strangers and gives you a reason to crash at the house of someone you never met before. But you don’t have to be a Nomad to connect with others. Re-telling the same basic facts of your life and dreams every day to new people forces you to reflect; and as time goes on and conversations run deeper, you discover that you’re interested in so many things, and you didn’t even know it.
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