We meet people every day through our daily transactions, travels and interactions. Some we remember, some are forgotten minutes after they leave our space and sometimes we can be a blueprint in a strangers memory of this day; even if to us asking for that specific cider and the coy chuckle that followed at the counter, was nothing more than a fleeting mannerism.

I’ve always been a believer in surrounding myself with the warmth and narratives of others. If I meet someone at a party, through work, via friends and even on an app like Grinder and if that person has a worldview that radiates in some shape or form to me. Then I’ll remember that face, the candor of that dialogue, the embarrassing dance to Ke$ha shared and embrace welcoming them into my life.

I learnt very young that people come into your life for a reason and that many enter when you’re lost, when you’re at a crossroads between your present and that future room that you perceive as your destiny, but destructively doubt is a foreseeable ambition. They enter your sphere in that moment when you’re stuck in a pedestrian traffic jam on a bustling cityscape, they bring a smile to your face when you’ve spent a season painting a canvas of frown lines on your forehead and they come into your life and change you, by simply being them. Something new, something unexplored and someone who knows nothing at all about your past and that yellow brick road behind you, that’s busted your balls for too long.

At age 14 I was lost in a giant abyss, one built by a choice I made that resulted in me having to enter adulthood faster than others. This decision and its ramifications were well hidden to the world, to the schoolyard, to everyone but my parents. The view from my blue eyes had become permanently blinded by this incident; my waking and sleeping hours engulfed by the abyss of that day. These blinders made it inconceivable to even fathom attending my year 10 camp at Mount Maunganui, despite months of anticipation for this week of teenage freedom and adventure to finally arrive. Thankfully Mum pushed me as she always had, she assured me that my anticipation and excitement for this teen escape would return the moment I stepped on that bus and that this camp would be the light of the last few weeks.

Like always Mum was right and on this week of teen rebellion yesterdays, emotional stains became every tomorrow’s possibility. Intoxicated by street brawls with local skaters, park sessions sipping on tequila from Fanta cans, days spent sinking Hobie Catboats and the soundtrack of Moby’s album PLAY. I met my crew, the boys and girls that now 14 years later are my family. From simply saying yes to the possibility that something good could come my way, I found my Andy, Aimee, Scotty, Ross, Michelle, Ant, and Pete and ultimately found myself again.

Moments like this where the people I’ve met have turned three seasons of winter into one uplifting Spring have continued to renovate my corridors of uncertainty, disillusion and melancholia into vibrancies worthy of handstands.

Sometimes they’ve come from having the balls to ask that golden-locked blonde who kinda reminds you of Penny Lane from Almost Famous on a date, while you’re practising your year 12 classics speeches and offered a lifelong friendship with your own version of the sweet valley high sisters, otherwise known as Ali & Fi. Other times they’ve surfaced at high school parties when the decision to swoon that timidly talented artist who painted landscapes worthy of McCahon frames named Frosty was made. Unveiling the canvas of your first love and ultimately first heartbreak too, courtesy of some less than caviler behaviour towards her when you arrived at that destination known as the university years.

These encounters with strangers who became the people who define who I am today, continued into my early twenties when a hedonistic older woman named Chloe showed me how to have sex beneath camellia trees, when an erratic abstract artist named Elle showed me how to make it on Karangahape Road for a summer and throw condoms filled with moisturizer at trannies disturbing our sleep. They gave me the glistening grins of afternoons post uni spent with Tanya watching stop motion animation, 90’s teen flicks and devouring NOS like it was oxygen, as only two media gleek friends can do. And these spontaneous encounters with strangers even gifted me the emerald green eyes of Lennon, the lashes that taught me to cook gourmet meals for my man and ultimately showed me how to love both another and my own sexual identity too.

My early twenties continued to shower me with stranger collisions that became connections of radiance, debauchery, inspiration and splendour. Each collision crafted by the Sohomo groove sessions shared with Alice, the K Road crawls stumbled with Josh and the piggyback rides with a Brit named Chris swigging from a Pinot Gris bottle on my back as my legs swayed across Grey Lynn Park, robustly laughing like Oprah Winfrey.

Sensations of the new and unknown have given me theatre sessions with Tom and his reawakening of my love for writing, they have introduced me to the Croatian beauty of an actress known as Frankovich. The type of broad who will indulge in BBQ shapes with you and gherkin dip and isn’t afraid to crank pass the parcel at her Tim Burton themed birthday party, even though she’s courting Edward Scissorhands for fingers.

Oceans away from the homeland and sea and living as a Melburnian, every day, every week and every month continues to offer sidewalks, rooftops and dance floors where the people you meet become those who you will share many chapters of your life with, both in the now and years beyond in the future. As each page gets written you experience the bliss of your new number one fag hag Sarah and a lifetime of dirty dance floor duets. The cackles of two effortlessly memorable queens named Dean and Jack who’s bravado encourages you to be a little less prudish and a lot more SLUTACIOUS and the fond memories of a brief yet enlivening interstate romance with Kenneth. A charmer with playlists that you could listen to for an eternity and a Garden State tattoo that melts your skin.

In the past month even thanks to the collisions of fate, I’ve been fortunate enough to sample new beds instore and share iced coffee aftertastes of the night before with Elle and see the world in colours, design and tasteful interiors while hanging with Peter. To both Elle and Peter I may have just been a new face, but once again in a time when I’m a little lost, especially professionally. It’s been the illumining new of both their lights and the conversations shared with two people who don’t know my entire back story or at least didn’t until I wrote this blog entry. That have lifted my spirits and showcased to me that life is not about the accolades you win, the six-pack you can flaunt or the platinum gold lining your bank account.

Life to me put simply is the people you meet, it’s about those who come into your world for a season, those who change you yet are probably entirely unaware of how significant their company has been in redirecting your ambition and verve for living.

I know all too well that life is nothing if not change, but I’m proud to say that every change, every stranger of neon that has entered my sphere glimmering with radiance and for some peculiar reason grown to love the Scoobs that I love, is still in my life today. Some share my current cityscape with me now, others share dialogues from distant shores but irrespective of latitudes, how our lives have evolved and who we are today. Every time I share a wine with them, laugh like an uncontrollable teenager with them and wail to a song that was once our soundtrack…. I glow a little brighter.

Written by Samuel Elliot Snowden