I left my desk for a cup of tea. When I came back 10 minutes later I had 30 or more returns from an email I didn’t send.

I’m not the most computer-savvy person in the world, but it didn’t take long to figure out what had happened. Someone (some people? something?) had hacked into my email account and sent everyone in my address book a link to some crazy product, a bunch of German words — or in some cases just my email signature, which includes a link to this blog.

It was inconvenient and embarrassing and took time to resolve. But strange to say it had an unexpected silver lining. It reconnected me with folks I hadn’t been in touch with in years. 

So what was triggered by the anonymity of the modern world became a powerful connector to real human beings.

Yes, I was hacked. But then I was healed.