Today I decided to stop by good old McDonald’s for lunch. As with any fast food restaurant, I usually go through the drive-thru because it’s easy, it’s usually fast and I don't have to socialize (hey, I'm just being honest). However, today it was a bit too long for me to wait in, so I decided to go in. While I was standing in line, another family came in and waited behind me—a grandpa, a mom and her two children.
The mom started up a conversation with me by saying they should have more people working at lunch time and we joked around about it and brought up the places we needed to be. We made small talk as best as you can while waiting in any line, but, by the time they shouted my order number, I knew that her daughter takes swimming lessons at the Y, that her son has an obsession with SpongeBob, that she loves cats and she wants more kids, but can’t because she has cystic fibrosis.
I learned all that about a family just because I decided to wait in a line of people instead of cars. She was a kind soul and I was a little happier walking back out to my car than I was walking in—simply because we crossed paths. As I walked back out, I glanced at the drive-thru line that had barely even moved and felt some kind of victory. Then, I almost felt a little ashamed, because if I would’ve stayed in that line like I always do I would have missed the kind woman inside. I would have missed her because of my desire to always do things the easiest way possible.
I was with that woman for maybe 10 minutes, and it made me think about how many people I’ve missed in the countless 10 minute segments of my life. How many times have I used the self-checkout at Walmart and missed the cashier who would’ve made my day with some funny joke? How many times have I been sitting on my phone next to a stranger and missed a good story they would have been willing to tell me? How many times do we do that? How many times do we miss a person, a conversation or an opportunity that could change our lives?
In today’s world, it’s so easy to do that to ourselves. It’s so easy to feel uncomfortable in social situations and resort to our cell phones. It’s so easy to look for the fastest way in and out of a store without even coming in contact with another human being. We want to do what we want to do without being interrupted, but maybe we’re supposed to have those interruptions.
Maybe it’s the homeless man on the corner who you avoid even looking at that could teach you a little about the art of helping another human being. Maybe it’s the old woman that you try not to sit next to on a bus that could give you the greatest life advice you’ve ever heard. Maybe it’s the big biker man with all the tattoos who stands next to you at some event that could teach you a little about not judging a book by its cover. Maybe sometimes it's even you who someone else needs to run into. God uses us in mysterious ways.
If I’ve learned anything in my young life, it’s that people change people. It’s people that can turn our lives upside down and rearrange it in a way we never thought possible. It’s people that can change our outlook on life and teach us about things we never really thought about. It’s people that make our lives so worthwhile. So why do we spend so much time trying to avoid them?
My biggest fear now is that I’m going to miss those people, that I’m going to miss those once-in-a-lifetime kind of people. That’s so scary to me, but I guess that’s why we have to keep telling each other to look up from our phones, to take the road less traveled and to just be here in the moment. Maybe you don’t realize it, but every single moment in your life determines the rest of your life. So look for those moments, those opportunities, those once-in-a-lifetime kind of people.
Because people change people.
