My LIFElines program, that started as “Memories to Memoirs” workshop almost 20 years ago, uses four lifelines (timelines) as the foundational tools to a process that enables people to see their lives from very different perspectives. My belief is that we can find purpose, joy, happiness and success because of life’s experiences, not despite them. One of the lifelines is for people we encounter in life. Some we spend a life with, and some we only encounter briefly.  Each has a lesson, a memory or a sense of connection for us.

For some reason, I’ve been thinking about two barbers that I had while growing up. One was my regular barber who worked in a shop about a quarter mile from my childhood home. I remember my mom or dad taking me there, the wonderful bubble gum that he’d give me after my cut and how, when I got older, I could read fishing magazines while waiting like “a regular guy” for my turn in this chair. He was my barber for a long time. He had post-polio symptoms, one of which was that his head was forever tilted to the side. Some 20 years after he first cut my hair, I was a married man with a couple of a son in tow and our family went to Sea World in San Antonio. Our little family cleared the entrance turnstile and, as I looked down the walk to visitors who were further down the walk, I noticed a man with the unmistakable look of my old barber. My wife watched our son as I sprinted away and down the walk to the man with the familiar head tilt. “Sir, sir…did you have a barber shop in Memorial Bend?” I asked while catching my breath. “Yes, I did. You know, almost everywhere I go, someone comes up to me to ask me that. It seems like my old customers are everywhere.”

The second barber provided a strange, but comforting link, to my childhood. I was about 17 and visiting another barber. I only used him once, but he formed a strange connection to my dad and my life. As he draped the sheet over me and put the paper collar around my neck, he asked my name. “Dion.” “You are only the second Dion I’ve ever met. The other one was a young boy. He and his dad would come out to Andrau airport to fish in the creek there and watch the planes. I think he said he was an accountant for one of the businesses there.” “That was me,” I exclaimed. Dad was an accountant, he had a client who had an electrical repair shop at the airport (that was located on the west side of Houston on Westheimer Road) and I remember us going there a few times. What are the odds that that could be another Dion? I could not then, nor now, muster any memories of us fishing there, but I do recall watching the planes and visiting the repair shop; however, fishing was one of the things we loved doing together in a variety of types of waters, so fishing there makes perfect sense.

Both the barbers provided me a sense of connection, then and now. Just telling their tales calms me, connects me to time and place, and reminds me of “you never know who knows who.” Remembering them and my life at the times they were in it provides me comfort and a sense of perspective. It also reminds me that we never know who we will meet, what their effect may be on us, or us on others. We’re all connected, sometimes for moments and sometimes for a lifetime. Of course, a lifetime is only a collection of moments. Consider who you encounter in the moments.