Encounters are those particular occasions in which we make common cause with the livingness of some other, addressed as you. Encounters are not occasions of commerce or combat, nor are they about achieving, performing or maintaining anything. Rather encounters are ends-in-themselves, just a me and a you attentive to-and with-each other in mutual presentation, unscripted, open-ended, conversational, freely entered into or departed from, each an episode of belongingness, each a plenitude, ever-wider, ever-deeper.
Though we often overlook or undervalue the encounters we have, all encounters–even those fleeting, or flowering suddenly in the midst of interaction of very different intention, or only felt as such later–are unique units of intrinsic and imperishable worthwhileness, and the true and transcendent wealth of our world. Encounters are forever.