So, dreams. We all have them. I'm not talking about goals or ambitions, though ideally we would all have those, too. I mean when you're sleeping and your consciousness decides staying in your head and in your room is boring, so instead ventures elsewhere. I often have these dreams where I'm in a random place doing nothing but standing around. There are a lot of other people I don't know there too, doing nothing but also standing around, every one of them staring at me.

Yes, it's creepy. But it always gets me thinking about our weird existence and the fact that we're just here, living, chillin' on a giant, rotating rock with other people who are simultaneously just like us and nothing like us at all. I know, I'm so deep and metaphysical. I once heard that every person we see in our dreams, whether we recognize them or not, is a person we have seen in our real lives. Supposedly, the subconscious mind is not capable of constructing elaborate original images of other human beings, so these dream people are instead pulled from an endless stash of the faces of real life people our brains have been hoarding since birth.

This means those people staring at me in my dreams could be the lady who bagged my groceries, the little boy who tried to give me his slobbery Jolly Rancher while I was in line at Taco Bell, the guy who was shoveling snow off his porch next door, or any extra in any movie I've ever seen. Isn't that crazy? If the subconscious is capable of creating such connections with people we've never met, why do many of us actively avoid making connections while in a conscious state?

Listen, I'm as guilty as the next person of fake responding to a fake text message or browsing old Instagram pictures simply in order to escape making eye contact or saying hello to somebody I'm passing on the street or sitting next to on a bench. Why? I don't know. I understand that not everybody is this way. To you upstanding citizens who have no qualms about delving into conversations with strangers, I applaud you. I really do. But for others like myself, it doesn't come quite so naturally. However, on the few occasions, I have ventured out of this particular comfort zone, I have never regretted it.

Here's an example. Last week I was with my 12-year-old sister at River Rock Roasting Company, a coffee shop in the quaint little town of LaVerkin, Utah. I was eating soup and reading "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," like I do. An old man sat at the table next to me. I noticed him--his unkempt beard, dirty shirt, and thick hands--but I didn't say a word. I was busy reveling in Professor Umbridge's comeuppance (being carried off by a herd of angry centaurs, finally). I could feel the man's eyes glancing up at us every once in a while as he ate his sandwich.

"You having a competition to see who can read the biggest book or something?" he said.

It finally happened. The moment I'd been dreading. Stranger talk. I looked at my sister for a second, who was also reading Harry Potter. "Oh, actually, it's the same book," I said. "We're trying to see who can finish it first."

Keep in mind that I am the most awkward human alive.

He asked what book and I told him it was a Harry Potter book. He said he never got much into Harry Potter. I tried not to hold this against him because I find it inconceivable that someone could simply not be into Harry Potter, but whatever. The point is that I talked to this old man for about 15 minutes.

I learned that he is originally from London, but he moved to the States because he married an American. They later got divorced, but he decided to stay while she died of cancer. He married again and got divorced again. And then again. He said he now lives with a long-term girlfriend who he knows is crazy but loves despite the fact, and has a few kids he never sees but is okay with that. One of his grandsons lives with him because the kid's parents are meth dealers. He said he owns some kind of a business in California which renders computer-generated images for the film industry ("We did a Spielberg movie a few years ago"). I never asked his name, and he never asked mine.

I couldn't stop thinking about it. I never saw that guy before and I'll probably never see him again, yet he felt comfortable telling me things that I might have been hesitant to talk about with my closest friends. It helped solidify this idea I have, that whether we know it or not, we are constantly seeking human connection--both cursory and complete. We want to know people with similar experiences, foreign experiences, and everywhere in between. Whether we just want somebody to notice us, somebody to listen to us, or somebody to save us, we have an innate desire to be and feel with others (no matter how much we insist otherwise). So let's not repress it any longer, shall we? Say hello to a stranger. Get out of your own world for a while, and try stepping into somebody else's. (#humanfamily)

* As a side note, there is an excellent podcast out there, fittingly titled "Strangers," hosted by Lea Thau and "featuring true stories about the people we meet, the connections we make, the heartbreaks we suffer, the kindnesses we encounter, and those frightful moments when we discover that WE aren’t even who we thought we were." Check it out here. I promise you won't be disappointed.