Monday, January 30, 2012

What Can YOU Do For ME?


I know it doesn't exactly look like it, but this is a thank you note. To all of you. For playing YOUR part in MY life.

I came here to write. I’ve done everything but. I had a bite to eat, some nuts, a banana, a tiny bag of chips. I had a latte and a Diet Coke. I checked Facebook, took my turns in all my Words With Friends games. I had a few new email messages, but nothing that needed an urgent response. Okay, nothing that needed any response. My blog tracker showed a few reads since I last checked. I read back through my previous post. I’ve played my usual coffee shop game of Guess What That Person is Up To. The lady behind me has her entire table spread with greeting cards and address lists and little papers of all sort. She is either sending wedding thank you notes, invitations of some sort, or getting a really early start on Christmas cards. And she’s doing it all the old-fashioned way. The woman in front of me has time to kill and nothing to do. She also might be dieting. Her lunch consists of a cup of soup and a Diet Coke. Or maybe I just eat more than she does. She brought her e-reader with her, so she has come to spend a couple hours in the company of others so that maybe she isn’t lonely while she reads. People do that. They go where there are others even if they don’t know those others just so they don’t feel so alone in their own lives. Don’t ask me how I know this. The guy beside me was on lunch hour, pressed white shirt, gray dress pants, sharp looking overcoat. He ordered his blueberry scone, ate it and left. I lack great fun gossip today as everyone is here by him or herself. Each table has only a single customer. Boring. Maybe I should get back to my business at hand. I came here to write. I have done everything but. I am procrastinating as I am trying to figure out how to speak on this topic without coming across as arrogant, full of myself, conceited beyond belief. Hedging, however, is pointless, so I will just out with my opinion, which actually begins with a question.

Why are you in my life?

I do believe you have crossed my path for a reason. Are you here to teach me a lesson, to provide me support, encouragement, enlightenment, to give me a bit of information that I might need for something I am supposed to do, to make me smile, to make me laugh, to help me when I am in need, why? Why are you in my life? Whenever I have issues with another and feel seriously at a loss as to what to do, I often ask myself this question. Why is this person in my life? I assume there is a lesson to be learned, a task to be accomplished together. I assume. I could be wrong.

Some people are in and out of my life so fast that I hardly have time to assess the purpose of the passing. My fellow coffee shop patrons this afternoon, I know, exist only for material. Except for that little guy who is here with his mom. They are regulars. His mother may work here. I am not exactly certain. Regardless, this bedhead of a little towhead charges full speed at life every day. He is relentless in his pursuit of joy. His face is plastered almost continuously with the most beautiful smile. He is doggedly persistent. Nothing deters him. If he cannot reach the counter, he grabs a chair. If he has a spill, he makes art of it. If his sister chooses a table not of his liking, he holds his ground. He knows where his joy lies, and he holds fast to that. I have never seen him not full of zest, enthusiasm, exuberance. He is the model of resiliency, as much as a two-year-old can model anything dealing with life’s injustice and inequities. I think this little guy is more than material. I think he is a lesson to me in gratitude, in being thankful for what I am given whether good or bad as it is all mine and it is all life and it is all here to be lived. Some of you are not just passing through, however. Some of you have pulled up a chair and have decided to stay.

So. Why are YOU in my life?

When I play this game of looking at you and your reason for existing in my life, I question, too why I am present in yours. I play the game the other direction. Why am I in YOUR life? Am I just material? Am I here to teach, to entertain, to keep you company when you’re feeling down? Am I here to give you a step up, a helping hand, a kind word, a warm embrace? I know that I have purpose in your life. I do not exist simply to eat and live and breathe independently of everyone else on this earth. I know that I am not in your life simply to pretty it up, but instead to make you smile or think or laugh or try that which you thought you could not try.

I have come to this. I may not know ever the reason we have crossed paths. I simply will put my best into our every encounter. I will be all of who I am whenever I am with you. I will smile, encourage, entertain, educate, love, inspire. I will help you in the way that I can, in the way that you need. I will be me and no one else because I know that you have those others who can be them and that only I can give you me. I will share what I know and who I am and what I am about in the hopes that even a tiny part of it may be that which you need to continue forward in your life path. Maybe you won’t need it now. Maybe you won’t need it tomorrow. Maybe you will need it years from now, but you will need it. And so I will give you that because it is mine to give. I will be here for you. I will be here for you as you are here for me.

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