Meet the Author — Dr. Irene Sardanis
Connections: The Power of Connecting with Stranger
Oakland Public Library — Rockridge Branch
Oakland
Feb. 24, 2024
As a writer with an unceasing streak of curiosity about other people and their stories, I have a knack for getting strangers to open up to me. I’ve found myself in bars or outside of bars on different Election Days — spontaneously hugging a stranger at the exact moment that Obama was first elected, and being comforted outside a different bar by a couple of young women when Trump was elected. (They assured me that, if all else failed, we could move overseas; they knew people who’d done this.) I’ve gotten into enlightening casual conversations with strangers at airports, the bank, on the bus, while attending concerts in London. The art of randomly connecting with others charms me, and keeps me believing that there are people or things in the world worth living for, or worth trying to understand better. I do believe that one of the main reasons we’re on this earth, if any, is just to connect with others.
That’s what compelled me to attend a library talk in Rockridge by Dr. Irene Sardanis, whose latest book is titled Connections: The Power of Connecting with Strangers. She sounded like a kindred spirit who also loved the strange magic of platonic meet-cutes. Even walking into the meeting room a few minutes late, she elegantly paused to say hello to me: “I welcome you. Thank you for coming.”
My heart warmed.
Dr. Sardanis’ story is uniquely Oakland-ish in its way. She chatted to the group — many of whom were her friends and loved ones — about the beauty of random encounters at her favorite bakery nearby while walking around Lake Merritt, near her office in town. It cements the feeling that our home is a special place, and that it holds a strange magic for other people as well.
I’m not blind to the random hurt and cruelty visited upon us through chance encounters, but the beauty and hope in others also resonated with me.
“To me, connection is a dance between two strangers,” Sardanis said. “Each of the people I’ve met were significant to me. They touched my heart.”
There was the young stranger, a handsome man she met near the lake, whose story of immigrating from Nigeria she listened to with rapt attention. She encouraged him to go to a bookstore, buy a blank notebook, and start writing it down. To her amazement, he called her that week to tell her he did just that, thanking her for her words. “Not only had he heard me,” she recalled with quiet wonder. “He also listened.”
She shared other stories that are included in her book, and said she still has yet more to share. She might write another book to fit them all in. “More stories, more strangers, more love,” she said. “Maybe that will be the title of my next book.”
“I’m so glad you all came, you made my day,” she ended. She kind of made mine, too. I walked out into the warm sunshine of the town, feeling blessed for the warmth of strangers and the beautiful happenstance of the people we’ve met and have yet to meet.
