No strangers here.

A few weeks ago, Joe must have said something about strangers, or made some statement about something we were doing, like “if a stranger saw us, I wonder what they’d think about that.” To which I responded that I had no way of knowing, since

I don’t know any strangers.

I remembered this yesterday when I was having a cry over the untimely demise of Sticks, a baby goat, only the cutest baby goat ever, a baby goat I’d never met who lives/lived with a person I’ve never met. And yet we’re hardly strangers.

Although intellectually I know it's probably an illusion, nevertheless I do feel like I know Sticks and his person Meg through the miracle of social media. I mean, really, after taking in image after image of this most-darling mottled kid and video, too, of him drinking from a bottle and pronking around this woman-whom-I’ve-never-met’s farmhouse kitchen, how could I not?

So when I saw the photo of his little grave, Joe was nearby and heard my sharp intake of breath, followed by my strangled cry of “Oh nooooooo.” And then tears.

For all that people bitch about social media and its potential to disconnect us from each other and from ourselves, I don’t believe it. Sure, there’s danger in anything, but there’s something amazing, something magical about its power for Good – i.e., its power to make not-strangers of us all.

Nope, no strangers here.

It reminds me of one of the things that I love so much about yoga, about the people I’ve met through the practice. When we’re all together in the room on our mats, I feel like I know something essential about each person present, the truest thing about them, that thing that comes before personality, before name, before what they do.

They’re unknown to me, and yet known in the only way that really matters.

Then I think about books, and how much I love them, to the point where as a child I was accused of caring more for the characters in books than for those around me. [That was never true, just btw.] Anyway, I think about the recent findings that people who read fiction are more empathetic afterward. And I wonder about social media and its power to pull us together over something adorable or something sad or something heinous (#bringbackourgirls). Maybe we're not really and truly Friends, in the old sense of the word, but we're sure not strangers.

And anything that makes us not-strangers? Well, that just seems like a great thing to me.

Maybe I’m an apologist, a hopeless wired junkie who needs to rationalize her problem, but I really don’t think so.

I just keep coming back to the poor little Sticks the kid.

Even as I cry my eyes out over poor little darling Sticks who ate azaleas and couldn’t recover and as I send love out virtually to @farmermeg whom I’ve never even met, except for following her adventures, reading her words, about urban beekeeping and farming and life, I am so glad to “know” them . Sure, of course, I wish I’d beheld little Sticks in person, felt his wiry goat coat under my hands, fed him.  More than that, way more than that, I wish – we all wish – he was still with us, growing his cuteness every single day.

No strangers here. Not a single one.

Rest in peace, little goaty, so well and truly loved.

XX