It’s amazing how many people come in and out of our lives every single day. People we don’t always pay attention to. The mailman who delivers your mail every day, rain or shine. The FedEx guy and the UPS one. The garbage and recycling collectors. The people who clean the streets you walk down. And the ones who keep the city you live in safe.
I read a short story collection recently called Let the Great World Spin and it’s about several interconnected stories that are taking place at the same time. And there’s a person or two that’s connected in each of them, some more visibly than others. That made me realize that if we were to zoom way way out and look down upon our lives, we’d discover that so many of us come in and out of each other’s lives daily. The woman you pay at the grocery store and the neighbor who’s walking his dog. The waitress who brings your sandwich or the one who prepares your coffee. We touch each other’s lives in small and big ways, often without even realizing it.
Who knows what’s happening in their lives. What tragedies they might be facing. What sickness. Or anticipation of something big. Fear. Even joy.
So, I thought, today we should take a moment to express some gratitude to the people in the edges of our life. The people that otherwise recede to the background. Maybe with a wide smile. Or a little note in the mailbox. A big tip.
You never know, it might be the highlight of their day. What you do know is that it’s guaranteed to be one of yours.
The following is cross-posted from the Weekly Gratitude Blog. I will post there every Tuesday and decided to post those posts here, too. For those of you who read both blogs, I apologize in advance. Some weeks the content might be different and other weeks, exactly the same.
Leave a Reply