I had an experience happen recently.   I wasn’t 100% sure of writing about it – but the emotion behind it was so overwhelming I can’t not put it down.

Perhaps, I’m afraid that I’ll forget it – or forget what it felt like. One of those moments – you experience in life that are so profoundly intense you want to live in it forever.

Like all things -there’s a word for it: 

Mamihlapinatapai. .

Essentially – in theory it can be defined as “a look shared by two people, each wishing that the other would initiate something that they both desire but which neither wants to begin”.

Though unlike most things – it has been said to be “the most succinct word.” Almost impossible to define.

An awareness so unparalleled – there are no concrete words to define it.

I knew of him – though I didn’t know him. Lord knows – he didn’t know me, but in that second when I walked past him and his eyes locked with mine – we knew each other. He stopped doing what he was doing, placing his pen down and politely pretended to be listening to the woman talking to him. But he wasn’t paying her any mind. His eyes were locked on mine. Our eyes fixed on each other.  He held my gaze and neither one planned on letting it go. A challenge, intrigue, a familiar recognition? At that moment – there were only two of us. The crowd faded away and I was left in an unexplainable limbo. I felt like he knew more and wanted more of me – than anyone had in my entire life. No one had EVER looked at me that way.  I didn’t smile, or wave – now looking back perhaps I should have. I was too overwhelmed. Not by him, per se, but the rawness of what had transpired. I kept walking into the crowd – severing the moment. I stopped. Flushed. Pulled from maelstrom of the empyrean I was drowning in, I tried to gain composure.

Oh my God …. I whispered.