This one is short and sweet.
I was picking up some print outs from my local Staples store in Bayside, Queens. An elder gentleman was waiting behind me and picking up his things as well. I smiled at him. He smiled back.
"Happy Monday!" I said cheerfully. "How's your Monday going?"
George has pure white hair and was wearing gold-rim glasses. He was wearing blue jeans and a green and black water-proof jacket. He leaned against the counter casually and looked at me with surprised. Surprise that I was speaking with him. There were wrinkles around his eyes from age, life, and experiences. I just wanted to put my hands on his face and ask him to tell me what he has seen.
"My Monday? Well, I'm just happy to be alive today." George looked at me with a serious face. "I am grateful to have gotten up to see another day."
'I am grateful too, so that I could have met you,' was my thought and wished I said it. Even the smallest interaction with someone in the same room as you, who you may not even exchange a word with, may change your life forever. One of my favorite books by Mitch Albom, "Five People You Meet in Heaven," touches upon this idea.
Strangers are intriguing to me, because with a simple, "hi," the course of your life will go in a completely different direction. I'm obsessed with Ted Talks, so here's an awesome video for you to watch. My main takeaway from Kathleen Taylor is this- "People at the end of their lives are incapable of bullshit."
With that said, we should be living our lives true to ourselves, all the time.
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