Shopping For Love

What do you get when you give?
What do you give to get?
When you give it is a feeling of exhilaration that is addicting and self-growing.
It is like that plant that doesn’t even need water to grow.
I was walking into a store the other day
And a lady was on the ground dragging herself to a bag.
She had fallen and she was too heavy to get up.
At first, she seemed like she had a method so I was just going to go into the store.
Then I saw her dragging herself and I was wondering if that is just how she got out of her car and did her business.
But I was just curious so I went to her and asked her if she needed help.
She told me that her daughter was going to come out of the store in a minute, that she was in line.
Then she walked out of the store and was holding onto a pole to hold herself up…
And then she let go of the pole and she fell.
So I asked her if I could get her daughter or help her up.
She told me we would have to find a big man to do that.
Then her daughter came out and when she saw her mother on the floor she ran to her and asked her what happened.
She didn’t seem to expect her there.
The daughter and I both managed to get her to her feet again
And they were both so grateful.
So I was about to leave and they asked me my name.
Before I could tell them
The relief on their faces was the very relief I felt to have helped them.
It was the smallest of things, yet it was bigger than me at the same time.
I got tears in my eyes and I couldn’t tell them my name.
I was just silent and they were staring at me.
It took me a minute and then I could speak my name.
I walked away as though someone cleansed me,
Like making this very small difference to people I would most likely never see again.
It made everything I thought about my own life as new as it felt to fall into this family’s circle unexpectedly.
It reminded me how much we care about each other without thinking of it
And it is when we think too much that we start playing the taking away game from ourselves.
So I went to the store and didn’t find what I went there for.
A little later that day I was thinking about not finding what I went there for
When it occurred to me that I found exactly what I went there for.
That when we go to a store, we are buying love of some kind to ourselves
And that lady on the sidewalk was the love that day.
I left more fulfilled than anything I could have purchased.
More cleansed and appreciative of people.
We forget sometimes how much emotion there is when we touch each other in this way.
How good it feels to share a strength we may have more than another
And accept their strength when ours is not with us.
We build a wall that makes us think we are not in need.
We are all needy and it has nothing to do with food or money.
It has to do with our emotions catching up to the other advances in our lives
As we can balance, life looks differently and “needs” much less to fulfill it.
If we step back from the wall
Only then can we see it
And walk around it.