Article first published as Meet a Stranger, Leave a Stranger on Technorati.

It's Friday and you've got major plans for a night out on the town with your friends. Your cell phone blows up with texts and Facebook notifications from friends trying to coordinate logistics. You indulge your ego a bit and think, "Yea, I'm pretty cool." How can you not meet Mr. or Mrs. Right looking this smooth? With the logistics taken care of and that scandalously short dress clinging onto your slim physique for its dear life, your single self is ready to mingle.

Sound familiar? It should if you are one of the many twenty-somethings and even thirty-somethings in this day and age of extended adolescence and delayed marriage. Most people don't realize the irony of "city life." More often than not, the landscape of bustling metropolises like Los Angeles or New York can make one feel irrelevant and disposable. Expectations are to blame. We are taught to aim high. Hope for the best but prepare for the worst. Subconsciously these clichés do more harm than good. Expectations dictate our careers, our relationships and our self-image. Indeed, expectations shape our perception of reality. It's incredibly difficult to loosen the grip on how attached we become to our expectations.

In yoga philosophy, there are five kleshas. Kleshas are believed to be the root cause of all suffering.  Attachment, or raga in Sandskrit, is the third klesha. Raga is responsible for much of our unnecessary suffering. Suffering is a product of the mind and a direct result of having too many or too unrealistic of expectations. Seduced by attachment to the unknown we anticipate the future with great vigor. We can make whatever we want out of our perception of the future because it hasn't happened yet. Projecting our agenda out into the future can feel exhilarating but in actuality we are simply entertaining a fantasy; a figment of the imagination. Some might even  call it "flirting with the future." Let's keep the agendas in the office and out of the nightclub.

Perhaps during your evening out on the town you meet someone. You share a drink or two...or three with this person while you delve deeper into conversation. The waiter swings by to pick up your third empty martini glass. Suddenly it hits you like a ton of bricks; you're smitten! Ugh, not again! Smitten every weekend isn't really smitten. You ask the waiter for a glass of water in hopes of washing away your new-found awareness of the situation. After reevaluating your silly feelings about something that hasn't even progressed past the stage of cordial conversation you continue sipping your way to sobriety. Feeling refreshed and empowered you realize that continuing conversation with this interesting individual is valuable in and of itself. It seems unfair to place any sort of expectation on your encounter with this stranger. You decide to abandon your agenda and simply enjoy the beauty of arriving as a stranger, meeting a stranger, leaving a stranger and leaving as a stranger.