The other day on Veterans Day I happened upon an opportunity to treat a homeless veteran to lunch, I didn’t go looking for him, just spotted him as I walked out of a convenience store and discerned from his appearance that he was homeless. I felt thankful that I was able to do this for him on Veterans Day of all days.
A few minutes later at a business lunch someone picked up my check. I thought that was kind of cool in a paid it forward sort of way, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the homeless guy as we conducted business. I went back to try to locate him after our meeting but to no avail. I will be keeping my eyes out for him in the future and will do my best to repeat this act each time I see him. It’s the least we can do for someone who went to Vietnam to fight on behalf of this great nation. For some reason this has been on my mind lately and I can’t get it out of my head that while we often times concern ourselves with what we are going to have for dinner the fact that we are having dinner at is something we take for granted. There are people out there that are concerned whether they are even going to have dinner…
This morning I woke up to a cold house because my wife prefers it that way (this is a whole blog post in itself), but there are people out there that woke up on the ground to a chilly 40 degrees this morning w/out a roof over their head. Who am I to complain because my fingers and toes are blue when I roll out of my king size bed inside our 4 bedroom home?
The real motivation for this post though happened this morning as I was sitting in the doctors office for my monthly checkup. I was just sitting there hoping my blood pressure would be good and my triglycerides would be at a normal level, and concerned I might be coming down w/ the flu when I heard a commotion at the door to the lobby. I couldn’t see who was trying to get in but I immediately assumed that it was someone’s kid fumbling w/ the door until their parents got there to pinch them on the ear and let them in. For a split second I thought about getting up but didn’t. I then looked up from my iphone to see a man come rolling through the front door in a wheelchair. He had no legs and a patch over one eye. I also glanced down and noticed that he had some sort of tube running from his chest into a black bag that he wore around his waist. I started feeling guilty that I didn’t get up to investigate the door rattling and help him get inside as he rolled to the receptionist window.
The first words out of his mouth to the receptionist were cheerful and she greeted him the same way. For some reason I started thinking about how disappointed I was earlier this morning when Starbucks told me they were out of White Chocolate Mocha at the drive thru. That was probably the ADHD talking but anyway, back to the story. I put down my phone and listened to the exchange between the man and the receptionist. It was like they were old friends, she obviously knew him. Upon hearing his somewhat unique and commanding voice, two of the nurses came into the reception area and started talking w/ him. He asked the girls that he was planning on doing some baking this week and he wanted to bring them something and asked if they preferred homemade bagels or bialys (he went on to explain what a bialy was and it sort of made me hungry for one myself). The girls decided on bagels and as their conversation waned he rolled over beside me.
For about a minute of so I kept thinking of a way that I could engage this courageous man in conversation but couldn’t get over my guilt for being so “less than jubilant” to be sitting there. Before I could engage him they called my name and I went back to see the doctor. I know for a fact that the image of this man will be emblazed in my mind forever. Life had dealt him a pretty crappy hand to say the least and here I sit worried about insignificant things while he had no legs and only one eye. Who am I to feel this way. I immediately went into prayer asking God to forgive me for my thoughts while I put on my big boy pants and went about the rest of my day. Pardon my language but this kicked me right dead square in my ass.
I started thinking about all of my friends who lost their loved ones this year and all of the misfortune that has happened to people close to me this past year and in doing so I remembered that I can pick up the phone right now and call both of my parents as well as my Grandmother on the phone. In fact, I have spoken to my mom no less than 4 times this morning on the phone.
Sometimes I think we have to have our behinds kicked a few times to make us pay attention. This was certainly my wake up call not to take this holiday season for granted. I hope this blog post is yours. Please feel free to share your thoughts…
