I’ve written about those moments where you connect, just for a moment, with a person you don’t know. I refer to that heady phenomenon as Synchronized Strangers. I love those moments but, in truth, what makes those instances magical is the fact that we usually never see those individuals again. That moment lingers in memory alone.

What happens, however, when a 'Synchronized Strangers' moment happens online? No, I’m not talking about eHarmony or Match.com or any other dating site. I’m referring to those moments when someone stumbles across one of your blog entries and something you say, or the way you say it, grabs their attention… and they comment. And, in their response, you realize that this person understands… they “get you” and they “get it” and synchronicity takes place. The same can be said for the reverse. How many times have you been that person following a chain of comments, links on a blogger friends page, or even guided by the great Google gods… when you land on someone’s page and you read their blog or their poetry or their fiction and you are immediately drawn to that person like a moth to flame?

There is still a choice that exists. You can keep on walking… leaving nothing but an IP address behind to mark that you were once there. Perhaps you bookmark the blog and read it secretly. Me? I’m a commenter. If you touch my heart or my soul or my mind in something you have voiced… I’m apt to tell you about it. Guess what I’ve discovered in this process:

“It is quite possible for people who have never met us and who have spent only twenty minutes thinking about us to come to a better understanding of who we are than people who have known us for years.” ~Malcolm Gladwell

It’s true. I have online friends that do “get me” more than some of the people I have known my entire life. And, in some instances, that understanding has been instantaneous. I get the eye roll on a regular basis; that “yeah right” look from people who don’t understand… who will never understand. I learned long ago to ignore them. We are human and we instinctively reach out to each other. Is it weird? Is it strange? Perhaps. But, it is also very real.

“Right now, you and me here… put together entirely from Adam sitting on this round rock with a core of liquid iron held down by this force that so troubles you called gravity … all the while spinning around the sun at sixty-seven thousand miles an hour and whizzing through the Milky Way at six-hundred thousand miles an hour in a universe that very well may be chasing it’s own tale at the speed of light. And, amidst all this frantic activity, fully cognizant of our own imminent demise (which is a very pretty way of saying we all know we are going to die), we reach out to one another. Sometimes for the sake of vanity. Sometimes for reasons you are not old enough to understand yet. But, a lot of the time we just reach out … and expect nothing in return. Isn’t that strange? Isn’t that weird? Isn’t that weird enough?” ~The Martian Child, Film (2007)