I was at the grocery store the other day and there was a friendly clerk at the check out counter. I could see her move through my groceries quite quickly with ease. She talked and moved in a fluent manner.
I could see her triceps flex as she reached for something, I noticed her forearms as she typed in the key pad. So I said to her, ‘Diane, how often do you workout?’. She looked up in surprise and said, ‘5 years I’ve been doing this and no one has said anything!’
I should mention she was ‘lightly toned’ not bulky, not sure I’d even call her muscular. She looked more fit than anything.
She went on, ‘I workout every day…you know what I say, AGE SMAGE, I’m 54 years old, if I can do it, there’s no reason others can’t do it’.
I thought to myself, wow, now this is a story I have to share.
As I walk past the other checkouts feeling good about our conversation (it always makes you feel good to give someone else a compliment that’s appreciated), I notice MOST of the people in line with their eyes buried in their phones.
We have such a lack of human interaction. I remember my Mom or Grandma would talk to someone in line when I was growing up as a child waiting with them at the grocery store. Which almost seems like a crazy notion these days.
What happened to a friendly smile, ‘how’s your day going?’, ‘did you find that on sale?’. Now these form of simple interaction are thought of as being nosey or even intrusive.
Today we’re too busy taking pictures or ourselves or flipping through our newsfeed to notice what’s going on right in front of us.
So I watch nobody help an elderly lady that needs help with her bags, simply because no one notices, I see someone drop something and no one moves because we’re preoccupied with social media and I think of Diane who lit up by a compliment brought about by simply noticing what was right in front of me.
