Monasticism, Prostitution, Astrophysics, & Brain Cancer

Usually, random people on plane rides are not open to conversation. But sometimes they are, and I've collected here the four most notable things I remember from my favourite conversations with strangers.

Monasticism

I sat for four hours beside a real Vedic Monk from India. He flies twice a year, to do tree planting in Canada for a month for money, and then returns — he's been doing this for 14 years.

Our conversation was exceptional, and I genuinely learned so much about life, but it was interesting to notice an undertone of his life being focussed too much on studying wisdom and not enough acting it out. Life is like that sometimes, I guess.

A year later, I only remember one concrete thing from this Monk, something he must've repeated fifty times. I think about it often, so I'll share it here, for you to contemplate too.

"Behind every emotional issue hides an unsolved technical problem."

Prostitution

This was a unique one. The young lady beside me shared that she was doing a PhD early in our ride. But it was at least an hour before I learned what she was studying: prostitution. Turns out, she's currently the only person in the country studying Canadian prostitution history, and my goodness, was there a lot to uncover.

I've never been into history, but she properly changed my perspective on that. I was captivated for a solid three hours. Heck, the reason she was flying was to see if she could negotiate in-person to access heavily guarded police records in Kingston that she'd been trying to get permissions for for years.

So, I discovered history can be cool, but it was something more personal that I remember the most. We were talking about the strictness of conservative families, and I shared that my religious upbringing had often used the argument of an infinite hell to keep me in line. Her response?

"What the hell happened to being a good person for the sake of it?"

Astrophysics

On route to San Francisco, I happened to be sitting beside a guy coming to attend a UAP (UFO) convention. He had a PhD in Astrophysics, and it only took a few minutes for us to get deep into a conversation that eventually weaved through politics, religion, education, and even personal life.

He had a lot of unique pet theories. After I forgot most of them, I noticed one seemed to stand the test of time. He argued that it takes strong pain tolerance to be smart. Changing one's mind requires both breaking emotional ties to your previous opinions, and breaking physical ties between neurons. Succinctly,

"Intelligence is a measure of pain tolerance."

Brain Cancer

To my right one flight was a sweet old lady, with deep smile lines. I soon learned this was her first flight in a decade, and she had recently had her second open brain surgery — almost all of her left brain was gone. This was noticeable in her speech: it was disjointed and sporadic, and usually didn't make sense if you used any context beyond the nearby words.

Despite this, or perhaps because of it, our three hour flight was one of the most genuine exchanges I've ever had. My face was sore from smiling when we landed. Her kindness was so honest and infectious.

As we parted, she left me with something I think everyone should hear from an old lady in a blue blouse at least once in their life,

"You're gonna have a great life! Keep being a good person, and things will work out."