JUST ORDINARY

It was recently brought me attention that I need to add more humor into my blogs.

Honestly, since I am quite funny, I realize that yes, I should add more comic relief to the stories you read…but then, I wouldn’t be completely honest, my fine readers.

The last few weeks have been challenging and I’ve been having a difficult time pretending happiness is everywhere. Actually, I feel more like the happiness crowd is hiding inside a box under my bed waiting to be discovered, so they all can yell surprise when the lid opens. Then I gasp, clutching my heart, and fall over and die.

It has also been within this past week that I truly recognized by own genius behind the concept of Positive Perspectives For Pouty People.

To start, I just found out that I’m not special. I won’t be changing the world anytime soon. There is nothing extraordinary about me. (Seriously, I was told by a psychic, and they are like the internet–if they said it, it has to be true.) All this means is that I’m just ordinary. Hmm. What do I make of this epiphany?

First, I was sad. Then I was mad. Then I was…I’m just kidding. Like I said, someone asked me to be funny. Anyway, I was at the grocery store after work. My knees were hurting. My back. My bla, bla, bla, cause no one really cares anyway, and I started talking to the bagger guy.

I was complaining but trying to be witty doing it. The bagger guy, we’ll call him Ishmael, told me he works two jobs. He allots himself fifty dollars a week for food groceries. This simple conversation got me thinking.

First, he seemed skinnier than I had remembered him from all the other times he had helped me at the checkout lane. Second, here is this late twenty plus year-old, just trying to pay rent, to eat. Maybe he has a cat that waits by the door for him to get home, snuggles with her, feeds her. Maybe he talks to his cat about the people he met that day and the traffic on the public transportation bus. Does he look at all the groceries he bags and wonder what it would be like to splurge on a beef jerky stick or an ice cream cone?

He caught me staring. I have a tendency to stare when creating a person’s story in my head. Finally, I asked him, “Doesn’t it suck?” (because I wasn’t in the best mood and my negative persona was peeking out). And to my ultimate surprise, he said, and I quote with slightly watery eyes, “The day is a good day, if I helped someone.”

Let that sink in.

“The day is a good day, if I helped someone.”          

Full circle. I was pouty, not thinking too highly of myself. And here, I experienced an explosion of a positive perspective, of someone finding purpose in their life without even realizing how they just affected someone else.

That’s powerful.

That’s gratitude.

I have nothing to complain about.