" Endless numbers of people surround you as you travel through life. Some you notice briefly, then forget. With others you make eye contact, which leads to a kind of emotional connection. And sometimes you have a conversation with some of these people.

And then you have your family, your friends, your workmates. All those who are close to you. Some move away, or your relationship cools, or they let you down in some way, and friends sometimes become enemies.

But most are simply folk who happen to live at the same time as you do. Millions of people who pay a short visit to the earth, whose stay overlaps your own.
. . .

Our real family is endless, even if we don't know who some of them were when we met them for an extremely brief moment. "

― Henning Mankell , Quicksand: What It Means to Be a Human Being