It’s not often I find myself alone with time to kill these days, but tonight I did and I was rewarded for using it wisely.
I stepped out of the Inbound 2012 conference and started to head straight for the T to go home, but it’s been so long since I’ve been in Back Bay on a summer evening with no place else I simply must be, and so I took a left instead of a right. And then I stopped. Maybe I wanted to go shopping. No, maybe I’d better head home. Wait, maybe the farmer’s market was still open…
As I stood there, pivoting left and then right, an older man sitting on a ledge next to his bike smiled at me. So I headed toward him.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hello. How are you?” I answered back.
We sat and chatted for about 5 minutes or so. He asked me about the conference, and what inbound marketing was, and he told me he lived around the corner and was retired, and he was enjoying doing not much of anything, and then we talked about the weather as Bostonians in the last vestiges of summer are wont to do, and then we wished each other well and parted.
Next I stopped into the Lindt store. I don’t normally buy candy, not even fancy candy, because I don’t trust myself not to eat it all in one sitting, but my husband loves chocolate. So I picked up a handful of truffles in different flavors, and the saleswoman was so friendly that we sat and chatted for a while. I told her the truffles were a gift for my husband, a sort of “Thank you for picking up the baby from daycare while I got to go to a conference and enjoy free wine” thing, and she asked me about Little E, and her laughter was so loud and beautiful I didn’t want to stop talking to her.
Finally I rounded out my walk at the Copley Farmer’s Market. This is my favorite farmer’s market in Boston, but since I don’t work in that area anymore I almost never go. Most of the vendors were packing up, but I did grab a giant yellow tomato for dinner.
I turned and saw the 503 bus heading down the street, and ran for it figuring the driver would do what many often (and are supposed to) do, which is wave me away. I know they’re not allowed to pick up passengers except at bus stops, and he knew that, too, but he opened the doors anyway.
Sometimes you can feel the universe smiling down on you, and giving you a little spoonful of sugar when your life is feeling a bit medicinal. Thanks, Universe.
Has the universe smiled on you lately? What are those moments like in your life?