It's a Small World, Episode #786

I love running into people unexpectedly. Fortunately, I have unique opportunities for small world experiences because I am often in places that people do not expect me to be, nor do I always know who might be in the area. For example, I have an unbroken series of running into someone I know at every Lutheran church that I have visited in the United States in the past five years. (No records exist before that, meaning I hadn't really noticed whether it was always happening or not).

Most recently, I was working in Illinois and arranged to meet a friend from Minnesota who was visiting her husband's college friend in a nearby town in Iowa (are you keeping up?). Thus, I was a guest in the home of a friend of a friend (who I'd just met) when she said she'd already invited one of her colleagues over to join us. It turned out that (unbeknownst to the host) we'd gone to grad school with him, and they both were professors with someone from my high school show choir, whose wife was also in that show choir. Sound complicated? One of the professors made this Venn diagram to illustrate the connections.

This one situation brought together so many chapters of my life: I was in Illinois for a musical theater job (for which I'd auditioned in New York) and close enough to see my friend in Iowa, and the connections were through grad school (in Minnesota) and show choir (in North Dakota).

The connections are unexpected, and they're not. We are all part of a larger tribe, just mixing in new ways that allow us to meet in person.

Who is in your larger tribe? With which tribes do you most identify? With which tribes do you no longer often identify?

***

Do you know someone who would benefit from this blog post? Please consider forwarding it.

Don't miss another Urban Nomad blog post! Become a fan of Urban Nomad on Facebook or visit the blog to sign up for email updates in the upper left hand corner.

The next round of $59 Online Interactive e-courses start April 28 and run for four weeks. Plan now to explore who you were created to be, create order in your world, or live your bucket list now.