Kindred Spirits

As time goes by, we meet new people on an almost daily basis – through school, through college projects, through work, through friends, through every possible way. Most of them we acknowledge with a nod of the head or a simple “hello” accompanied by a smile. More often than not, we do not have much to say to them, because we all are basically private people, no matter how extroverted or gregarious we perceive ourselves to be. Eventually yes, some of them end up becoming your bestest friends in the whole wide world, but until that occurs, we don’t have much to say to them.

Of course, there are times (albeit very rare) when we find some people that we just click with instantly. It’s an unexplainable, indescribable feeling when that happens. When you meet someone for the first time and while conversing, you find they like the same things you do – things that most people find you weird for even considering liking; you’re able to completely ‘GET’ their humor; you’re able to share your point of view without hesitating; you’re able to understand their position when they’re explaining it to the project team head; you’re able to look at them while speaking and think to yourself “Wait a minute! That’s MY opinion from someone else’s mouth! No way!”, and then end up completing their statement for them! How does such a phenomenon occur? You haven’t spent enough time to develop the sort of compatibility required for such a thing! In fact, you haven't spent any time AT ALL! And yet it has happened. It is simultaneously the most wonderful and questionable feeling ever. And I am lucky that this has happened to me twice in the recent years!

Sometimes, this aforementioned experience occurs in such a way, that it leaves you wondering and questioning and, more than anything else, marveling at the fact that it can occur in such a strange twisted way. Like the true story of the two women from two separate continents who wrote to each other regarding the deaths of their husbands and formed a kind of kindred bond. They ended up meeting after months of exchanging letters, on Oprah’s show and it was a wonderful end to the long period of wait. They hugged and cried and laughed and had everything yet nothing to say!

But as far as life is concerned, it doesn’t always have to be a big special on Oprah. This sort of thing occurs normally too. There are times when you relate to a person through nothing but their style of writing, such as this or any other blog. And there are times when you feel like you know a person you have never met merely by how someone else close to him/her describes him/her. And that’s when you find what you call a “kindred spirit” – a term that was coined a while ago but I only heard being used recently.

And you’ll know when you find yourself a kindred spirit. I don’t know how you’ll know – it varies with different people. I knew because she's the first person in a really, really long time who used the very term “kindred spirit”; she's the only person who could tell where the term originally came from; the only person I know (well, to be fair, I still don’t KNOW her) who knows Anne-with-an-e Shirley the way I do; I knew because she writes about relationships and experiences that are mine, only they're not; she rambles off onto other tangents just like I do; but most importantly, I knew because she allegedly speaks the way she does because of Gilmore Girls which makes her the coolest person! :D