A Thank-You Note to Strangers

Or: Some Places I've Cried

Hey, it’s me, Sarah. And this is Note to Self, a newsletter where I unpack whatever’s been in my notes app, tweet drafts, or group chat lately.

This is a thank-you note to strangers. First, to a man on West 58th street. 

Let me set the scene: it’s the week before Christmas, and I’m crying on West 58th street. (The holidays! So stressful!) I am, generally, an unselfconscious public crier, especially in New York where nobody cares what you do unless it interferes with their commute. What’s a subtle tear-streak among strangers on the train? Who cares about a delicate undereye swipe in a dimly lit restaurant? Not me! But this cry, on West 58th street, was actually kind of embarrassing. 

I had just ducked behind a potted topiary to try and regain some composure when, from the corner of my eye, a man appeared. “Do you need a hand? Or … a hug?” he asked, extending his hand toward me. He was a sharply dressed silver fox. He had kind, Andy Cohen energy. And he looked so concerned. My first instinct was denial: “oh no thanks, I’m okay!” But then we locked eyes, and the intensity of his sympathy was overwhelming—it looked like he was trying not to cry. So I said, “okay yeah, that would be nice.” He gave me a hard, genuine hug and said, “I’ve been there.” Then he walked away. I was so stunned by his generosity that I shed a few more tears before I pulled it together and took myself to breakfast (which fixes everything).

At breakfast, I was suddenly very aware of how obviously post-cry I looked. I noticed the people at the table next to me stealing glances at my blotchy face and fogged glasses. I wondered what, if anything, they thought of me. “No one is thinking about you, they’re too busy thinking about themselves,” the refrain goes. But is that true? I had just hugged a complete stranger! He was thinking of me. He saw me crying and he thought, “I’m going to ask if she’s okay.” It cost him nothing but an awkward hug and a few seconds of his time, but I’m unlikely to forget it. So now I’ll be thinking of him, intermittently, forever. Thank you, man on West 58th street. 

Then, there was my exercise epiphany.

The day before Thanksgiving, I went to a hot yoga sculpt class. It’s hot yoga in that it’s hot and you do a Chaturanga sequence, but it’s “sculpt” in that you jump, lift weights, and despair for the creaking vessel of your body. By some miracle, I finished the class. As we lay in Shavasana, the instructor dimmed the lights, lit incense, and lead us through a gentle exit meditation. I began to well up.

Call it endorphins, the Thanksgiving spirit, or dehydrated delirium, but I was overcome with gratitude for this instructor — a stranger who had wrung everything out of me and delivered me gently onto my back.

In that moment, I thought of all the workout instructors who have carried me through the last several years; strangers I have entrusted with the creaking vessel of my body. These people know nothing about me, but I arrive to them with the most vulnerable human pleas, barely concealed under the surface; “help me relax,” “help me sleep,” “give me a crumb of dopamine.” What an intimate, revealing condition to put upon a stranger. And what an act of generosity to receive strangers in that condition, and deliver them into a better one. 

I would also like to thank the man at Schiphol airport who shouted for everyone to let me through so I wouldn’t miss my flight; the couple who gave me a bottled water after I was sick on a train platform two summers ago; and the urgent care nurse who offhandedly called me “baby” when I had a very bad flu.

I am going to beat the tired drum one time for posterity, the one about how isolated and disconnected we’ve become in “these times.” It’s true: everything is broken and everyone is lonely and all the tools that we’ve made to connect to one another are actually breaking us even more. And without dismissing the legitimacy of the endless crises of our time, I would like to posit that the generosity of strangers remains in many forms. 

Whether we show it or even realize it, we bring our whole selves everywhere we go. Loneliness is in every crowded room. Our deepest needs accompany us to yoga. Our most difficult feelings are along for the train ride, dinner reservation, or trip to the hardware store. There’s something about sharing space with strangers, knowing that all of this is true for everyone, that gives me some solace even when I don’t cry in front of them. 

There’s a woman on TikTok (stay with me here), who went viral for explaining turbulence by describing a plane in the sky as if it were suspended in Jello. Even when the Jello shakes, she explained, the plane is being held in place from all sides. I think that at any given moment, every single one of us is both the plane and the Jello, doing our part to hold one another in place. Sometimes the ride is bumpy, but I have many strangers to thank for keeping me in the sky.

xx