Inexplicable Connections


BY GINA JABER

    When I moved to Alameda 18 years ago I knew no one other than my husband’s family. I left my home in Birmingham, which was rich with family and friends I’d known my whole life. It was hard to imagine building new relationships like those, but I trusted that over time it would happen.
    During my first year here, something happened that struck me as funny and maddening at the same time. I would meet new people and be overwhelmed with how much they reminded me of someone I knew back home. It may have been just a gesture or physical trait, or something as simple as their smile, but there always seemed to be something recognizable.
    The hard part was that I had no one, not even my husband, to confirm my impressions or marvel at the resemblance. I remember asking myself if it was my imagination; perhaps homesickness was causing me to will people to be familiar, or did I, in fact, perceive real similarities? I see now that it was probably a little of each.
    Over time, the déjà vu encounters stopped happening. People in Alameda started taking on their own identities to me; their body language and features became all theirs. Eventually, I couldn’t remember who reminded me of whom, and I took this as a good sign.
    What I still find happening is an instant connection with certain people at first meeting, whether they favor someone else or not. I’m talking about the immediate chemistry, the sense of warmth and trust we have with people we’ve just met. Our intuition isn’t always correct, and sure, people may grow on us once we get to know them, or turn out to be quite different from what we expected. But there’s still that occasional magic, that inexplicable and altogether pleasant feeling of instinctively connecting with another human being.‑
  I’m sure Freud and modern psychologists have had their theories as to why we are immediately drawn to some people and turned off by others. Beyond a pure physical attraction, there is probably some neurochemical reason or indelible childhood experience that stamped our psyche forever and compels us to react the way we do. Or maybe the strangers we meet and like are people whose paths crossed ours in a distant time and place. I’ve come to believe that the positive current that flows between two strangers must be partly rooted in the subconscious.
    Whatever it is, there’s something mysterious and yet simple going on that every now and then catches us by surprise. Call it, if you will, a momentary grace that binds. Or simply, a little high in life that we should enjoy.