Illumination

I once sold educational books door-to-door as my summer job in college.

Our team from New Hampshire drove halfway across the country to attend a week of sales school in Nashville. And then we kept on south to Georgia, where we lived out of sleeping bags on the floor in a one-bedroom apartment. My two roommates and I knocked on doors six days a week for about 12 hours a day.

Or at least that’s what we were supposed to do.

For the most part, I was a miserable failure. I struggled to stay on schedule of giving 30 demonstrations a day. I knocked on some doors here and there, searching for plastic toys and swing sets in the yard that signaled a home had kids. But I would get discouraged and find myself in the library digging for motivation in the pages of self-help books—or worse, going to the movies in the middle of the afternoon.

The opportunity was great, but the rejection was brutal. And for 30 years since, I have never stumbled across another book person who did this crazy job.

Until now.

I believe we live in an energy field of connecting threads that weave our human lives together. These energetic cords can be lovely, gossamer, like spider webs floating in the breeze—but they can also be thick, like a scratchy rope. Sometimes new ones need to be formed. Sometimes, old ones need to be cut. Many of these threads are invisible—until they are lit up so we can see them.

So, how did I meet this book girl? I was on a Zoom with some other coaches, talking about how to create safe spaces in groups.

When the group learned that I am from New Hampshire, one coach said, “Is that one of those states that have those amazing fireflies?”

Apparently, he was in Vermont once for a wedding, and they witnessed the magic of a cloud of fireflies dancing and moving in synchrony with each other. “It was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen,” he said.

I told him that I didn’t tend to see swarms of fireflies, but I had just seen the first one of the summer outside our bedroom window a few days before. I hadn’t noticed it at first, but my partner had pointed to it and said, “Oh! There’s a firefly!”

Another coach quietly listening to our conversation said, “I love this conversation. Hearing you all talk about fireflies, it makes me think of a time when I was in college, when I was selling books door-to-door, and…”

Thus, I met the other book girl.

When we realized we both had done the same crazy job decades before, we had so many things to share—but mostly, how the experience had a significant role in who we are today. In her case, it was because of success she had had—she was the top salesperson from California. In my situation, the experience shaped me because of the failure I was. I have not failed so badly at any other job since.

This unique thread of shared experience connected this coach and I. We knew the same inspirational quotes, had heard the same rah-rah speakers at sales school, we had held the same fluorescent cards where we recorded calls, attempted demos, and sales. We both knew the great feeling of Sundays—our one day off—when we could do laundry and buy our peanut butter and jelly for the week and see each other in team meetings to pump ourselves up.

It was the oddest thing, finding someone on a random Zoom screen who had lived that part of my life.

What unexpected threads have shown up that suddenly connect you to someone else? What series of events or conversations have brought you inside someone's circle far away?

It doesn’t take much to make these threads visible. It can be something as small as a firefly that lights a path from ourselves to another. They say fireflies are the illuminators of the night.