Talking to Complete Strangers

Perhaps there is something about talking to complete strangers that  makes us give far more of ourselves away than we would, normally, to someone we know, making for moments of unassailable intimacy with people we would probably never meet again which would be completely impossible with people we know- friends, relatives, siblings, parents. Perhaps it is the absence of fear of being judged, perhaps it is just that the people we actually know have been measured by us and found wanting on the scales of empathy-identified as non-kindred spirits showing our wounds and conflicts and contradictions to whom would be a complete waste of time, or perhaps it is just the yearning; no, hope; that we all have of finding someone who will Understand. Maybe this is what we want more than anything else in our lives, to be understood, to be known for what we are and to be accepted for what we are and why we are what we are, to have someone who would not speculate on the motivations behind our actions, who would be in complete tune with the way things are and will be in our lives, and who can live with that fact. And in that context it is ironic, and yet not entirely ununderstandable why we seem to open to strangers more- strangers represent the unknown, and when the known has been measured and found wanting, the unknown always also brings hope.