Today at a local drugstore, life gifted me a learning opportunity.
A local celebrity was carded for buying a couple bottles of red wine along with other items on her shopping list. I thought I could predict how this situation would unfold, but I had it wrong by any assessment.
The celebrity was moving slow, maybe even a bit scattered feeling. Slowly fumbling her probably- sixty-some- year- old hands into a purse searching for her driver’s license. She politely, rather softly asked me to go ahead, but I was drawn by curiosity and decided to practice patience for a change.
After she left, the checker and I talked about the situation. The checker knew who she was which surprised me. I assumed that she didn’t, otherwise she wouldn’t have carded her. I was also surprised by how patient and understanding the celeb was and how well . . . normal. She has varieties of junk paper, punch cards and plastic scattered about as I do in a small pocketbook.
My lesson: a moment presents a time to be surprised by people and think better of them. We don’t absolutely know anyone all the way whether familiar friend or scattered stranger.
Parenting gives me a chance to remember this throughout my day. I feel so fortunate to be humbled into admitting I got it wrong, after I've recovered from whatever reaction I had.
My daughter seems wonderfully complicated, complex, highly- spirited, and creative and when I feel like I’ve got her figured out and can predict her ways and needs, she stumps me like she woke up having learned a new foreign language while dreaming. How can this be when we are biologically so similar?
If our world, our culture, our community, even our street, could simultaneously remember this what a gift it would be for everyone. Don't be so sure of ourselves that we got it "all" right.
A good friend told me it takes five years to really know someone. Some premarital advice to me. My mom is 77; she surprises me constantly. And, I’m still learning about myself, decades deep into living on this planet. I guess my husband would probably say he’s still baffled by me also. I would usually say, I know my husband knows this... but I'm using guess instead.
I want to believe that each moment is teachable when our minds and hearts are kept wide open and focus on the now, certainly not the then, nor what will happen in a drugstore in two seconds.
Be open to people now, in the moment. I try to not rely on seeds I've planted about people in the past. Past report cards, past newscasts, past difficult behaviors or conversations, past tears, past disappointments.
Life is now, this micro-second with fresh micro-seconds to give people and compassion a chance to change hearts and minds and life.
