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In Defense Of Talking To Strangers
I sat in an airport lounge in Mexico City; feeling the caffeine run through my veins from my lukewarm Americano and filling my stomach up with an assortment of free snacks.
I was deeply engrossed in Viktor Frankl’s A Man’s Search For Meaning when a stout, middle-aged man asked if the seat next to me was taken. I let him know it was free, and he sat down.
A conversation quickly ensued about the work both him, and I did. He was a papaya farmer in the Jalisco region, and he explained to me the volatility of crops. When he heard I wrote about psychology, he was surprisingly keen to talk about the subject.
Quickly, the conversation turned to the mental and spiritual work he did on himself after a 3-inch tumor was removed from his brain. As he began his story, the man pushed his bangs over to reveal a scar that ran across the side of his forehead. The doctors told him that recovery and gaining his motor skills back would take years at least.
Uninterested in not being able to walk or function normally for years, he attempted to accelerate his healing through a clean diet, meditation and working on his pre-existing anger issues. He explained to me how the area of his brain that was operated on affected his emotions, exacerbating how quickly he could be enraged.
