Appreciating the beauty of transient human interactions

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Happy Sunday and thank you for opening this week’s #TheLifeofJLOWE newsletter! I’m writing to you again today from Utila, Honduras for Vol. 2 of my chronicles here, staying consistent with my newsletter as my means of reflection and introspection throughout my time here.

If you missed out on last week’s newsletter, be sure to check it out on the website - it’s titled “If you could be anyone, who would you be?”.

Also, if you’re a real one, you’d have noticed that my Youtube channel has been dormant since travelling here, and while I want to fully blame the bad wifi in my apartment, it’s also because I’ve been so busy scuba diving so much that I haven’t gotten around to editing. But stay tuned!

What’s on my mind while my body is on an island? 🤔 

Well, sitting here now, finally taking a few minutes to myself this week to reflect, I can’t help but think about the nature of this place, and the beauty of transient human interactions.

I’m going to be here in Honduras for a month, on this island that people often frequent for vacation and stay for a relatively short, vacation-length time. Even being here for a week so far, I’ve already had fulfilling interactions with people and developed friendships, but I’ve also seen new friendships go as people continue on their own life adventures.

People come here for a few days and are amazing to talk to and learn about, and then - poof - they leave, and are gone (and we probably won’t meet ever again). Of course there’s a few people on the island that are here for a while as well, offering us the opportunity to develop friendships that can continue on through social media, but that’s not the focus of my reflection today.

The beauty of transient human interactions

With the people that are only on the island for a short time, despite us having great interactions, there’s not the length of time necessary to develop a meaningful relationship that would be continued after one of us leaves.

For me, it really sheds a light on the nature of friendship, and what it means to actually call someone a friend.

For some new people, you immediately click when you first meet, and when you talk it’s like you had been friends all along. But for others - most people, I’d even reckon - it takes more than one or two interactions for them to open up a bit more and for you to actually begin to get to know them.

In a place like Utila, where people are on the move through their travels, I’m coming to learn to appreciate those transient relationships with people that only last a few hours or days, and appreciate the beauty of sharing joy with someone for a short period of time, being a part of each other’s timelines for a small blip and then moving on.

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Appreciating the small things, even the small interactions

I think coming from a normal social context to a more transient one like temporarily being on an island, you begin to recognize that you can really enjoy the company of people without needing anything more from them.

You don’t need to develop deep relationships, to find happiness in human interactions, and in fact there’s studies shown that there's real happiness to be found in talking to strangers.

In the same way that just talking to someone quickly at a cafe while you wait in line, or making a joke with someone at the supermarket checkout can bring you a small burst of happiness, I think there’s true enjoyment in meeting people who you know that you may only see a few times more until never seeing them again.

I think it’s to some extent liberating, but more than that, I think it super amazing that our brains are wired in a way that allows us to gain happiness from positive social interactions with people that we don’t know (and maybe will never truly know).

Conclusion

People make the world go round. Being kind to all people helps too.

I think as an extrovert myself, I sometimes take for granted how much happiness other people can bring me, because talking to people is just a regular daily activity. I know my introverted audience is reading this like - “you want me to just talk to a stranger???”

In all seriousness though, being able to reflect on the way transient human interactions affects me has made me realize that we truly have so much more in common with each other than we do that sets us apart. We take for granted the fact that we are even able to have small interactions with other people, whether verbal or not.

We take for granted that the fact that short-lived relationships between two people from completely different backgrounds - in any context - is truly a beautiful thing.

It’s so easy to feel like the people around you are so different from you, whether in language or looks, that there’s no point in trying to strike up a conversation.

But take it from me - the more people I meet, the more small interactions I have, and the more transient friendships I go through - it’s incredibly true that we are sharing this planet and we’re sharing this lived experience. Appreciating how magical that can be puts you on the journey to fully living and loving life in the way that I think it was meant to be.

Until next Sunday,

Justin