While my flight from Charlotte to Cedar Rapids on Wednesday night was delayed almost 5 hours, that’s the only thing that was bad about my trip to Florida for a work conference.
It was an amazing four days, highlighted by great networking and the making of a few new friends. But one of the things that stood out the most to me were the stories of a couple people I sat next to on the plane flights.
One person was Bob Jury, an Iowa filmmaker en route to Ft. Lauderdale to a film festival to share his film, Working Man. When he found out I was from Dubuque, he said he had shown his film at the film festival in Dubuque. Later in the flight when I said the name of his movie, the exact paragraph he was reading as I said the name of his movie had the word workingmen in it. He told me this and I saw it on the page. It was then that I shared the book I was reading, There Are No Accidents, a book about synchronicity.
On the way from Florida to Charlotte, I sat by a woman who was heading home to Traverse City, Michigan, after finishing her 77th cruise. While she was gone, her best friend died. They used to travel the world together. She was worried she had missed her funeral. Turns out, she was returning home just in time to attend. I told her that now her friend can travel anywhere in the world unencumbered.
I love meeting random people and hearing their stories. Everyone has one. We just have to stop and listen long enough to hear them.
WINTER WONDERS 