Last week I ran into a friend on the subway that I hadn't seen in 5 years. The last time I saw him we were stuffing our face in a little cafe in Florence, Italy. We never shared anything more than a Tirsamisu but I always thought of him fondly (as a friend, must I really put that out there).
Like me, he is not a member of Facebook or any other social network. When we left Italy we sent the occasional birthday text but slowly we lost touch. I can't honestly say that I had thought about him very much since Italy, but running into him was a delightful chance encounter. It made me realize that in this Facebook dominated era, the chance encounter has become something of the past.
Run-ins at a dive bar on the lower east side are no longer accidental, they're planned. A friend invites another friend to a bar via conversation on their facebook wall and soon enough the whole world knows about it. A guy likes a girl and sees she will be at this bar and "coincidentally" he shows up for a few drinks with some buddies. The girl thinks their meeting is fate, the boy knows he is a stalker.
So, are chance encounters dead? It's getting harder and harder to decipher when the run-ins are real ones or fake ones. So many of us believe in fate (I'm in the air on this one) and could take a chance encounter to mean something more than it actually is. I miss the days of bumping into a friend I haven't seen since middle school by pure chance. Instead, I see this girl all the time because both of our groups of friends have been invited on Facebook to attend the same parties.
I'm wondering, is it possible to bring back the days of bumping into someone on the sidewalk on a sunny Sunday just by chance? I faithfully believe that those days are still ahead if we allow them to be, and when you do have a chance encounter, I promise you, you will know it.
