Once, on a train, a man sat down across from me whom I never saw again. We travelled for six hours. He told me about his father, about the house he had sold, about a letter he never sent. I do not know his name.
Many years have passed, and I still remember his voice.
People we were not expecting
It seems to me we put too much faith in plans. In the idea that important people arrive on schedule: at work, at school, among friends. In truth, many of those who changed us appeared by accident. The person next to us in a queue. A woman in the library who recommended a book. An old man on a bench who said two sentences.
We had no time to grow attached to them. That is exactly why they spoke honestly, and we listened honestly.
In such conversations there is no past and no future. There is only the hour you have. And it turns out to be enough.
What stays afterwards
I think there is nothing accidental in these meetings. Not in the sense of fate, but in a simpler one: we meet those we are ready to hear. If that man on the train had sat down across from me ten years earlier, I would probably have taken out a book and never looked up.
Chance is simply a meeting we did not have time to prepare for.
Now I try not to hide behind a book. I leave room for whoever might sit down opposite. Sometimes no one does, and that is fine too.
But when someone does, I put everything aside. Because I know: six hours can stay with you for a lifetime.
