le confort des étrangers

it is an interesting idea. isn't that what our parents advised us when we were young, "don't talk to strangers". yet sometimes it is strangers that give us great warmth. But the title of the letter was based on two different themes. the first, a movie i watched last night 'The Comfort of Strangers'. one of those classics that has a very high grade cinematography and plot, and leaves you asking what? why? how? the second, that i was in the company of a stranger; a stanger that i know for a short while. I won't spoil the movie for you now, but while i recapitulated the sequence of events in the plot I wondered how it is that we progress in relationships. total strangers are what we usually start out as with only a single or very few common links - shared problems, shared interests, common activities, among others. Yet there have been times when i have had the most swell times with absolute strangers, people that i met only once and perhaps never again. and then there are those other strangers who eventually become best friends or even life-mates, but only, only after atleast one of the players lets down their guard and as long as the other does not take advantage of the weakness. the question really is what is the relelvance of this? The key words are annonymity and mutual respect. Both of these characters are desiriable in strangers that makes them some times more desirable than closer associates. I think we need a healthy dose of both strangers and close associates.