I’ve been talking about this for many years, writing about it again as recently as August 2008, and I’ve found that the more I get into deep conversations with people we learn that there are closer than 6 degrees of separation between us. They don’t even have to be “deep” in the realm of really intimate personal details but more about experiences, hopes, dreams, etc.
Last night was a perfect example.
My partner, Michael, and I decided to stop by two neighboring listings of mine (about half mile apart) and walk our dogs between the two and then hit a new local pizza place called Pizzeria Pulcinella on Rainier Ave S in Seattle in the Lakeridge neighborhood on our way back. While sitting and enjoying our meal, I struck up a conversation with a young lady, Julianna, who happened to be one of the 2 daughters of the owners. Over the course of several questions I asked regarding the restaurant, I also threw in a couple of more personal questions such as, “since you’re in college, are you planning on joining the restaurant industry like your parents, or will you do something else?” She replied that she preferred to go into teaching.
Many of my good friends are teachers so I prodded her with more questions which eventually uncovered the focus for her degree is educating special needs kids. Her reason for being so interested in this very specialized area? She had been a caregiver about 3 years ago for a young girl with special needs who had died at the age of 16. This young lady’s name who had passed is Devin. The experiences that Julianna had with Devin were so profound that she decided to dedicate her future to working with more children of special needs.
The connection? Devin was a friend to one of our client’s children, Alex, who also just passed away in November of 2008. We had just attended his life celebration only 3 weekends ago. Julianna knows both of the mothers, and so do we. Alex’s mom, Vicki, is one of our clients and she got us involved in the fundraising efforts of CTC Kids (Children’s Therapy Center) which is just for kids with the most severe disabilities and who have more extreme special needs than those of mainstream kids. We’ve been proud supporters for about 3-4 years now, and while we didn’t meet Devin, she had just passed away before we attended our first fundraiser – which made for a very emotional event since her mother, Susie, got up to speak after a very moving video that had been produced over that past year. We’d just seen Susie again at Alex’s life celebration so it was interesting to have run into this other connection so soon after. I made sure to pass on to both Vicki and Susie the news of what Julianna was up to and they both were so excited to see my email note to them and to know that their children had had such an impact on another human being/person who had helped care for them.
Seems those skills I use to help clients figure out their hopes and dreams and how those translate into their future are also good for finding close connections.
For me, it was tremendously heartwarming to hear what this young lady had to say. To think, it was only about an hour of off and on conversation that got us to the realization that we had more in common that Michael’s love of this family’s other restaurant (Vince’s in Renton) and pizza. These are the kinds of connections that really make a local place turn into a special place in my mind and heart.
