We parked on the top level of the parking garage and entered via a landing overlooking the entire store. Shelves and aisles packed with hopelessness disguised as holiday goods, as shoppers, as workers in line trying to cash their paychecks at the end of a long cold week. A swarm of emptiness overflowing the brick and mortar.
The lines snaked around bright displays of cheap junk. It is the sinking soul of consumerism but it also where we bought Boo‘s glasses. The narrowest and cheapest frames on the market are sold only at Walmart. And one of the best eye doctors in town clinics there once a week.
The staff of the ophthalmologist knows her. They are sweet and funny, an island of humanity. We watch the madness as if we are outside of it.
As we were leaving I tired not to see the faces of the people standing in line. I tried to block out my feelings which I assigned to them. A man with a cane not able to make his way through the crowd of shoppers and no one slows down for him. An old woman in worn blue scrubs near tears in the return line rubbing her back. A lost child by the bank line.
Out of the crowd a young man towered above everyone else. I pointed him out to Beach. “He must be over 7 feet tall!” She gasped. We made our way back to the escalators rising out of the craziness to the safety of the dark and bitter cold parking lot. But as we rose the tall young man stopped what he was doing to sign an autograph for a little smiling boy; he was a University of Utah basketball player buying red gift warp and some shiny string. The little boy's mom and grandmother tired looking and loaded with groceries and other smaller kids waiting patiently with love.
Joy and love are like ripples in still water, they spread.
A random act of kindness and suddenly everything has changed.
You are the designer of the world you live in.
You find what you set out to find.
See beauty where you seek it.
If you light your path with kindness you will always be heading the right way.
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