Member-only story
The Power of Human Connection
A chance encounter over breakfast
Finding yourself in a new place or a strange location for the first time can be a situation where we can be out of our depth, not so much in terms of knowledge, but certainly for human connections.
Yet if we take a moment to lift our eyes up from the phone or the laptop, to look around us, then the opportunities for human links are everywhere.
This morning I was having breakfast in the canteen of the College where I am currently on a teaching contract for Maths and English Language support for 16 to 19 year olds.
In a large room with perhaps 100 seats there were just two other customers, and I knew both of them. One was a librarian colleague and the other a security guard at the end of his overnight shift.
I was just finishing eating when a man approached my table and asked if he could join me. “Of course” I said, knowing full well that if I had been in the same situation and been rejected this would have been a knock to my normal confidence.
He sat down and we got chatting over so many topics we found we held in common.
- He was lecturing in Construction Management and my father used to be a quantity surveyor for a large Scottish construction firm here in the UK.
