Similarly, many of the Peace Corps volunteers I served with gave up good jobs -- as engineers, teachers, IT professionals -- to leave home for a couple of years and find the enduring fulfillment that comes from leaving your comfort zone and improving the lives of strangers you have grown to know better than your neighbors back home.

CNN: From Marine Corps to Peace Corps

Or else, shocked into stillness, gazing around themselves as if in wonder, searching for comfort in the faces of strangers.

NPR: 'Ancestor Stones:' Life and War in Sierra Leone

She's a hypochondriac who finds comfort in a local cemetery where she tends the graves of strangers.

BBC: Director brings Romance to 'uptight' Brits

Yet they find no escape, for their survival and comfort now depend on unpredictable strangers in far-off corners of the globe.

WSJ: And the Fair Land