Something I saw in a car park
That really cheered me up
I spent fifteen minutes after work hanging around a very large car park. I was in one of those moods: an unproductive day at work had ended, and I didn’t want to go home either. You know the feeling, you’re a fellow Earthling who’s a little like me. To top it all off, it was drizzling! Drizzling! For some reason (and a few wrong turns) I had been drawn to this large car park, surrounded on three sides by Panera, Starbucks, Jerry’s Subs, Krispy Kreme Donuts, Safeway, AT&T, and numerous other friends of the earth who care deeply about us. What was I doing there?
As I got out of my car, I walked in the same direction as two ladies who had just gotten out of theirs. They were in their mid-40's, both with very blonde hair and both quite large. They also both wore identical black yoga pants which stretched. One of them was lagging further behind the other. It was as if one of them felt attached to the car, and didn’t want to stray too far from it, while the other couldn’t wait to get inside whichever store they were on their way to visit. The one walking further ahead was holding her iPhone, but she wasn’t engrossed in it totally, not the way you see the younger zombie generation. No, this nice lady came from a more social era, and so moments after she glanced at her iPhone, she turned back to her friend and said in a loud, raspy and lively voice,
“I’m ‘sposed to meet my quota of 7000 steps today, but I’m pretty sure I’m gonna come up short!”
Then she laughed madly, like a crazy person without a care in the world. As I overtook her, I caught a glimpse of her phone (which she was waving in the air freely) — it displayed the app. that she was talking about (and which I had been hearing about from random people in random circles for the last month or two). On the screen, I could make out two sets of numbers,
12 / 7000
I figured out what they meant and then the sentence she had just uttered began to replay in my head, at which point I smiled and found myself thinking, “what a fun lady!” Like some of the people I like most, this woman was going through life as though it were a game. She was trying things out, moving around, engaging here and there. Nothing seemed like doomsday; everything in the whole wide world was just a care-free laugh away from being unimportant.
I mentally clicked like on her being, on all 12 steps of her cheerful, laughing self. As I did so, a pure white Instagram heart appeared in the thin air all around her, fading into magic invisible dust which I then walked into and breathed in.
Liking others is liking yourself.
How many characters are there are in this ridiculous world of wonder? That particular one brought me out of my funk and into a good place for the rest of the day. Thank you for the heart, fellow Earthling!
