Wisdom From a Stranger
Sometimes the people who shape us are the ones we will never see again.
I met Lindy roughly twelve hours ago, and I am writing this now from London, on my way home, still turning the conversation over in my head. I was flying back from a team retreat in Bend, Oregon, the kind of trip that is part work and part bonding, taking a connecting flight from Los Angeles to London. I did not expect to come home moved by a conversation with a stranger, but that is exactly what happened.
The Conversation
Lindy quietly asked if she could sit next to me, and immediately she had the kind of presence that makes a stranger feel less like one. She was in her seventies, and she told me this was her first international trip on her own, which carried a quiet bravery.
We started with the small things, where we were headed and why we were travelling, and then the conversation deepened the way it sometimes does between two people who know they will never speak again. We talked about family and about the plans you make together when you are young and certain there will always be more time. Then she told me about her husband.
The two of them had a list of places they would go and things they would see, the kind of dreams couples plan to do together when their children grow older and leave home, certain that later will always arrive. It did not, because he did not live long enough to take those trips with her. But here is the part that stayed with me: she is taking them anyway, not to move on but to carry him forward, visiting all the places they had dreamed about visiting together.
Get Sam Kwapong’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Her advice was simple but it landed with weight. Travel while you are healthy enough to do so and do not wait too long, because later does not always arrive. And then she reframed how I think about money, telling me to save for my children, yes, but also to save for the things that will bring me joy when I am older, the trips and experiences that make a life feel lived rather than only survived.
The Conflict I Carry
I told her something I do not often say out loud, which is that I battle a quiet conflict every time I travel away from home for work, a tension between the version of me that boards the plane and the version that wishes he could stay.
I have built boundaries to protect what matters, refusing to travel longer than two weeks for work no matter what, and setting reminders through the day to call and check in, especially when the time zones are working against me and the hours do not line up the way I wish they would. Those boundaries do not erase the tension, they only make it survivable. But Lindy did something for that conflict without ever telling me to stop travelling or to feel guilty. She simply showed me, through her own story, what it costs to assume there will always be more time, and what it looks like to keep loving someone across the greatest distance of all.
What she helped me see is that the balance I am chasing is not really between work and home, it is between the trips that take me away from my children and the years I will never get back with them while they are still small. The work travel I worry about is only a few weeks a year, but the version of me that misses bedtime stories and ordinary mornings is the one I have to answer to later. Lindy spent her working years saving and planning for a someday that never came for her husband, and the lesson she handed me is not to stop going, but to make sure the going never quietly costs me the very people I am working to provide for. Presence now is its own kind of saving, and it does not earn interest if I wait too long to spend it.
What I Took Home
I will probably never see Lindy again, because we did not exchange numbers or promise to keep in touch. She was a stranger and she remained one, but she gave me something anyway. She reminded me that the plans we postpone are not guaranteed, that the people we love deserve our presence now and not only our intentions later, and that the reminders I set and the limits I refuse to break are not signs of weakness but signs that I have understood something: the work will always be there, but the people might not be.
If you are waiting for the right time to take the trip, mend the relationship, or simply be more present with the people you love, consider this your nudge, because later is not as reliable as we tell ourselves.
Stay blessed.
