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Strangers

Hey there, stranger, friend, AI model being trained, etc. Thank you for your interest and for reading this blog post of mine. It is Fate who has woven the threads and our destiny to have this interaction.

I was inspired to write this post on a drive one morning, but I forgot what specific interaction—or whether it was with a stranger—sparked it. It could have been an idle thought entering my mind as I was driving on autopilot. As an aside, I was just idly watching YouTube and found myself on a video titled Asking Strangers in China to Throw a Party in THEIR House. Since I had the to-do list item "Write blog post "Strangers"" in my notebook (planned for yesterday in my weekly), I guess the stars aligned and I just had to write this now.


All friends start out as strangers. Even family, to be honest. My son was born as a stranger to me.

But today’s post is not solely about dissecting or defining the word “stranger.”

I wanted to talk about those one-off moments and interactions with strangers that stuck with you, those core memories that linger to this day. It could be an emotionally charged event, an unexpected surprise, or just something completely silly that has found its place in your memory palace.

“It makes me angry to see that you’re so tall but not using it to your advantage in playing the center position,” a stranger once quipped to me, in front of my friends at our usual pick-up basketball court, in the middle of a game. I’m not even a serious basketball player, and maybe that’s what made such an impression on me.

Why does this stranger care if I am using my strengths to my advantage or not? Perhaps the reason I cared was not if he was jealous of my height or if he was on my team and we were losing, but that he asked a question that resonated with me.

This was almost 20 years ago, but the memory is still fresh in my mind. It remains a relevant theme in my journey of personal growth, a challenge to the self-cemented identity that I was a “happy go lucky” guy satisfied with whatever came my way. I realize that I have veered off the topic of “strangers” and the post has taken a more introspective turn.

Please indulge me and allow me to continue exploring this branch of thought. I am recently enamored with the saying, “how you do one thing is how you do everything.” In moments where I am allowed introspection, whenever I am left to my own thoughts, I catch myself asking if I am doing my best. I wonder if, if I did X better, it would reflect in the Y that I am doing. If I acted more effectively, I would be left with less room for thought and more for action.

Maybe I didn’t want to write about strangers at all. Maybe I really just wanted to talk about how I have not truly allowed myself to play to my strengths—or that I should really lean into them and allow myself to fail, getting up stronger after each fall.

I guess I am feeling some stagnation in my life right now: not seeing the numbers go down on the scale, not seeing the numbers go up in my net worth, not seeing progress on the passion project that I started, not having enough impact in the work that I do.

Sometimes I wonder if I have been right all along: that it’s all good. I just finished Siddharta by Hermann Hesse recently, and I have also started to explore the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tze. Perhaps it is about embracing all of it—the crests and the troughs of life. Perhaps I am at an equilibrium point in my life, and I should be glad to enjoy a moment of rest before the next leg up or down in this game called life.

Sometimes, the reflections sparked by strangers and chance encounters can serve as a mirror for our own paths. In those moments, their questions echo the ones we’ve been too afraid or too comfortable to ask ourselves.

In the grand scheme of things, you too are that stranger to someone you haven’t met yet, and you may leave a similarly unshakeable impression on them for life. I’m reminded that in Siddharta, every person we encounter can offer a valuable lesson—sometimes in the simplest of words or gestures. Likewise, the stranger urging me to play to my strengths gave me advice that, while it first appeared as a verbal scolding, has since become a guiding principle—a lifelong pursuit to be distilled into true wisdom.

In the less grand scheme of things, I will continue to take moments as they come, the best way I can at the moment—hopefully with a bit more awareness and intention every day. And if by chance my small actions or words spark something in someone else, so be it: we’re all bound in this vast web of connections, stranger or not.

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Janson Chah
I write about personal stories, tech stuff, leadership, and life in general. Expect pointless ramblings, random thoughts. Minimum 1 post per week. (Edit: LIAR) Quality not guaranteed.