One Degree of Separation

So, I’m sitting in the hotel bar last night (no jokes about “big surprise there” allowed) with my associate Michael Martin here in San Francisco and was reminded once more what a freakishly small world it is. We struck up a conversation with a man named John MacDonald from Glasgow. He was hilarious and entertaining and turned out to be a cellular biologist working in Montreal. We chatted for an hour or so before another gentleman joined us at the bar. He overheard our conversation and asked John where he went to school. It turns out that he was from the UK, also a cellular biologist and that they both went to Washington University in St. Louis and did their post-doctorate work under the same professor – just a decade apart. How is it that in a random dive hotel bar off Union Square two men who literally spent years of their life in the same classrooms would intersect? Odd.

That same day in the trade show booth, we started talking to the folks in the adjacent space. One of the women in that booth was from Chicago but after speaking with her, she stated that she had lived in Denver. When Michael asked more about the where’s and when’s he discovered that they actually had lived within a block of each other and had common friends – again that one degree just temporally displaced.

What’s the point of these musings? I suppose that it is just interesting that in this vast and incredibly overcrowded world we live in that the threads of our lives and past can intertwine in these myriad ways. As cliché as the “six degrees of separation” term has become it has a firm foundation in truth. I guess one of the cool things about being obnoxiously outgoing is that you can really discover those connections. So the next time you are standing next to someone in line, strike up a conversation – you never know who you might run into!