How many times have you faked being asleep on a plane to avoid talking to the person next to you or buried your head in a magazine in a waiting room. My hand is up.
As kids we are taught never to talk to strangers. The warning is intended to ensure our physical safety from someone who may cause us harm. As we grow older, the "stranger danger" mentality doesn't change. It just has another motivation. We simply want to be left alone.
My recent re-read of Bob Woodward's "The Secret Man," gave me pause to reconsider the stranger danger mentality. Consider the relationship between the Washington Post reporter who broke the Watergate cover-up story and his infamous source, Deep Throat. How did it start?
Woodward met W. Mark Felt, revealed as Deep Throat in 2005, while running an errand at the White House. Woodward was with the Navy at the time delivering classified documents from the Pentagon. Felt was also couriering important documents from his post as an aide to CIA chief J. Edgar Hoover, presumably to Nixon or his lieutenants.
As the two shared a bench in a White House reception area, Woodward simply struck up conversation and, with some persistence, a friendship with the man his father's age. The mentor-mentee relationship bloomed, though privately, and went on to change not only Woodward's career but American journalism and political history.
Granted, the likelihood is small that the person next to you on the plane will be as interesting as someone next to you on a bench at the White House. But chance encounters have the opportunity to change our lives in ways both small and large. Embrace them.
