Please, listen to me, stranger!

“After a long time, she finally arrived back in Spain. She wanted to spend a few days there with a good friend of hers. It was more than a year since they both saw each other. Many stories to tell, many laughs to share, just nice moments. She had missed that.

She arrived in the early morning in Madrid. Still had few hours until reaching her destination. She was extremely tired but happy and excited. She wanted to surprise her friend for her birthday. Could not wait any longer.

She had booked a carsharing from Marid until the city where her friend lived in. It was always a nice way not to get bored on the way, and to meet interesting people. They started driving and in the beginning they had the typical small talk. After the first stop, when everyone had their coffee, they kind of wake up and started to have a proper conversation.

She was amazed how a person she met since no longer than one hour ago, was able to open so quickly with her. She found out his life story.

She found out how his parents got divorced and his mother abandoned him and went away with another guy. This fact, for sure, made him want to start work at a very early age so he can have a better future. You could notice in his hands that was a very hard-working guy.

She could feel how this experience left him with a mark, in the way he was talking, in his body language, something that he will remember always, something that will influence him in the way how he will treat a woman.

She found out that, while he was dating a woman with two kids, he discovered that she was still married and was cheating on her husband with him. This was before things become more serious. This made him feel such a bad person because it was never his intention to interfere in a marriage, less in one where two little kids were involved. This was like a punch in the face because he did want those babies to go through what he went when he was a child. He immediately stopped any contact with that woman. He thought in telling her husband, but he knew is none of his business and this, will just bring bad energy in his life. He regretted he ever met with her, but it was already too late.

She found out that he was not the kind of person to hate someone. He was telling her that, when his ex-girlfriend cheated on him, he packed all his stuff and left, no fight, no violence, no reproaches, no awkward situation. He remembers that he still needed it to pick some stuff from her place and had planned to just go inside, pick up the things, and leave. In the moment when he arrived, they started talking, they hugged, and they ended everything in a very beautiful way. He felt in peace with everything that happened.

He knew that she and the guy she cheated on him were going to get married. What surprised her to hear from him was that he was feeling happy because, if by cheating on him made two people fall in love and decide to spend their life together, it was not supposed for his relationship to last. People most of the time are too proud so, to hear this from him, she felt extremely impressed.

She found out that after all this, he still believed in love. He was dating a girl and it did not matter at all that she was living one hour away from him. Every time he got the chance, he would go and visit her. He mentioned that if you want to be with someone, to spend time with that person, you will always find some way. She was smiling seeing him how excited he was while talking about her, the way they met, the plans they had together, the surprises he prepared for her.

She found out that he had well-formed opinions, based on facts, related to the politics and the actual situation in his country. He could name a couple of examples of why he thinks the way he does. In many occasions, people think in a  certain way just because: because the family thinks that way, because of the neighbor, because on television people talk about it but he was not the same, he really showed interest to read about it and to form his opinion as an individual and not as a group.”

I am here right now, in my friend’s house remembering all this. It happened a few days ago in a two-hour drive. Yes, just two hours of my life.

If this amount of information you can find it out in two hours, imagine what will happen if you spend more time with a person. And she was not making any questions, he was just talking and telling stuff, as if he was holding all this inside since a long time and he waited for that moment to happen to share it all with a complete stranger, to share the story of his life, or at least the moments that marked him the most since he was a little child.

Imagine what will happen if we would listen more to people? Imagine what will happen if we would invest more in people? Think how this will help them, and maybe by helping them we are helping us. What if, from the happiness of other people, we allow it to be also our happiness, or at least for one moment?

Sometimes we hold all this inside and we just need a person next to us, either a stranger or a good friend, to free all the words, the experiences, the fears, and the feelings we keep inside.

In a world where the population is increasing, in a world where technology allows you to connect with everyone, in every part of the world and at every moment, more and more people feel more and more lonely.

What is your story?

Version in Spanish: https://journeywithmada.com/historia-nr-15/

Version in Romanian: https://journeywithmada.com/povestea-nr-15/