Another Grocery Store Man

"You must love someone.  You're buying them flowers." 

 

I turned to look back as I pulled my card from my purse to pay for the groceries and I smiled as my eyes met those of an elderly man with gray hair and a flat brimmed farm machinery cap pulled down. 

 

"Yes, myself."  I said with a laugh thrown in. 

 

"That's good.  You must love yourself." 

 

I stopped, not simply trying to shrug the conversation off anymore.  Turned again, to make eye contact with both this gentleman and his wife because well, anytime someone says that kind of powerful wisdom within five seconds of an encounter is worth a few moments. 

 

My smile grew wider, "I couldn't agree more." 

 

"Isn't that just the trouble these days, everyone looking for love in all the wrong places." 

 

At that point, I actually wanted to hug that man's slightly stooped shoulders.  Because there he was.  I would put money on his being a retired farmer who had been married to the lovely lady standing next to him for at least fifty years.  There he was.  A man who had undoubtedly worked his entire life through hard times and through laughter and tears and he got it.  And was willing to dole it out in snippets of conversation while in line at the grocery store.   

 

 

This life. 

 

Is something. 

 

Moments of shared beauty around every corner if we are willing to turn to look back and engage.  Engagement is the key. 

 

I often worry about where our society is headed.  Do we have the guts and the where with all to make it as that gentlemen and his wife who I met earlier this afternoon have?  Do we get it?  Do we know what matters?  Are we engaged in the right ways with the right things? 

 

 

I can only hope as long as there are pockets of people trying to do it right that our society will rise.  Rise one tiny fraction at a time by grocery store line visits about love with the generation who lived simply and who worked hard and who believed in the deepest parts of their souls quitting was not an option.  In any aspect of life, including love. 

 

 

The flowers I bought myself on this yet again snowy day are sitting in a mason jar on my table and my heart was filled yet again by an elderly man with gray hair and a flat brimmed farm machinery cap pulled down grocery shopping with his wife. 

 

"You must love yourself."