thread

around the table at a restaurant in downtown London sit a small group consisting of several Brits, a Serbian woman, an Irish woman, 3 Italians, a German, and 3 Americans. as bottles of wine, various tapas dishes, and “walked into a bar” jokes are being passed around, I sit in astute observation, for it feels oddly reminiscent of a bag of Scrabble pieces. you reach in, pull out a handful of letters, each with different number values (which, for the sake of argument here, would be the different nationalities and geographical locations). in the end, though, each letter comes together to form the same word. this theme is on my mind a lot, actually, but never have I witnessed it in such a refreshing, outright manner: no matter where we come from in this life or where each of our fibers began, the one connecting thread is that we are all simply trying to live our best lives. essentially, to make the best of the mixed bag we’re given. so much of this world contains a conscious focus on the numerous ways one group is set apart from the rest. yet as the laughter and affection pass through this table from one end to the other like a current, what I also witness reaches much farther than any longitude or latitude could ever stretch. in this world we are all so much more similar than we ever are different. the Irish woman next to me throws back her head with a hearty chuckle at the most climactic part of her story, simultaneously patting my back and grabbing my arm. as she does so, a wide grin spreads on my face from one cheekbone to the next, but not from how charming her story happens to be – which it indeed is. rather, the smile is more or less the recognition of the moment itself, that here deep in the basement of a Spanish restaurant in a continent resting in far away coordinates, one kind soul feels the same value in another and it isn’t remotely dependent upon which brogue we happen to speak. she pours wine into my glass and we clink them in cheers to what would be another round of many that evening, both of us thankful to feel a sense of home far away from the one we typically know.