Almost every day on my drive home from work I drive by a cutie old lady who is walking a basset hound that I can only assume is older than the lady herself!I didn't see them at all last week...or at all earlier this week...and I was starting to actually get really nervous that one or the other...or both...had died!
I saw them yesterday...and I can neither confirm or deny that I may of started crying a little...
This little lady and her basset hound got me thinking about all of these people in our lives that we see on a regular basis that we have really no actual relationship with whatsoever.
I wonder if people who 'see' me all the time start to get a little worried if I 'go missing' for a while.
Like...do the people at the McDonalds drive through on the corner of I-10 and 7th st. start to wonder if I'm alright when I've gone more than 2 or 3 days inbetween visits. Or...the girl that dresses up as Lady Liberty and walks outside the tax office on Mill and the 60...does she wonder if everything's ok when she doesn't see my orange Ford Escape coming down the road around 5:00 every day? Or maybe the guy who is always taking his offices mail to the mail box at the same time I am every day...does he think I've been fired (or maybe quit) if I haven't been there for a while?
Probably not..........
But...that brings me to another thought: the influence and effect we can have on people we only meet once or twice. I can think of quite a few instances where I came across someone only once...and I can still remember how they acted or what they did and how that influenced me.
Like the other day I left the office to get lunch at Panda Express and I grabbed by debit card and left and I got through the drive through and went to pay and realized that I had grabbed my credit card (which doesn't work anymore) and I had no way to pay! I looked around my car...I don't know why though...I guess hoping a miraculous $5 bill would appear...but it didnt and so I turned to the guy and said "I'm so sorry...I don't have anything else" and took my card back and was just going to drive away and he says "Oh...don't worry...you can just have it! We're just going to throw it away anyway" and I said I couldn't do that and I felt really bad, but he insisted and so I took it, thanked him, drove off (and probably cried then too!).
Another time I was in the line at the post office...I think it was mid July or August last year...I guess I just remember that it was REALLY REALLY hot and the line was long and people were grumpy and short to the workers (and I'm sure the workers weren't thrilled either) and it didn't seem like a very posative situation. For some reason that I cannot remember now, the lady next to me struck up a conversation......OH I REMEMBER NOW...Sarah Harward called me and talked to her for a minute, but then asked if I could call her back in a few minutes. The lady next to me says "You must be pretty optomistic thinking you're only going to be a few minutes" and from there we just started talking about who knows what...gardening I think...and she made what could of been a miserable visit to the post office something rather enjoyable.
I know neither of those are really great examples...but those people could of easily turned those situations into something completely different. The Panda Express guy could of (and had a right to) be really upset and said rude things...or the lady at the post office could of been crochety and said some rude thing about me being on my phone in a public place or just completely ignored me in the first place, which is sort of the 'socially acceptable' thing to do when you're in a public setting now (elevators, lines, city transportation) ...
In closing (since this is turning out to be longer than any formal talk I've had to give) I'd like to share a quote with you that I have framed on my desk at home:
"I shall pass through this world but once. Any good, therefore, that I can do or any kindness I can show to any fellow human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it for I shall not pass this way again."
