I met a man in a village in England some years ago. I was trying to hitch a ride in a small village, traveling to the coast for some sightseeing. I was standing on the road side when he approached me and asked where I was headed. On a side note, it is obvious when we are visitors to another country, but not always obvious we live six states away from where we are standing.

Natural curiosity gets the best of people and I thought this man was no different. He asked me where I was going, so I told him. Then he asked me where I started from and I told him where I was staying. He then asked me if I like the people where I was staying, and I said, yes, I thought they were very friendly people. The man then asked me what type of people did I expect to meet when I arrived at my destination? I replied I did not know how they would be.

The man changed the subject and asked about where I lived in the United States? I told him, and he followed up with another question about how did I like the people back home? I said, I liked the people back home; I thought they were nice people, they usually offered help when they could, and they were generally good people who try to do the right things.

Once again the man changed the subject and offered that perhaps I would find the people where I was going to as good as the people I already knew? I thought about this for a few seconds, and decided it may be a possibility, and offered up the people in the next town were more likely to be good people than stand off type of people. The man laughed and said, the people I met would be just the people I expected to meet. I asked him why he thought this, and he said, because I seemed a friendly person, I could expect that most people I would meet would be friendly to me.

I thought about this, and asked him why this would be? He replied that no matter where we go in life, the people around us generally do nothing more than reflect back who we are. Because I seemed a happy person, most people would act happy around me. In my lack of any real perspective on this, I had to take the man on his word. I told him, that was quite an insight on people and was he a psychologist or psychiatrist? He said no, he was unemployed, but generally did odd jobs and minor carpentry when he could get it. I then asked him if he traveled a lot? He told me no, he had never been farther than three towns away from his home in his life.

I forgot this man and his wisdom that day as I enjoyed new sights and sounds by the English seashore. It took me many years to appreciate the wisdom of his conversation though. On that day, as I walked on trying to hitch a ride, I thought what a silly person he was. Him never having been anywhere really, never even leaving the area he lived in, what could he possibly know about the world? An expert on human relations who had never been more than fifty miles from home! I know now what he knew, and what he told me turned out to be so very true, he knew a lot more about the world than I did, even though he had barely been away from home in his lifetime.