In Common Light

I am viewing the mud on the tires of my car and remember how they got there. They got there from a trek into dirt on the side of the road. Not a regular business. I bought flowers from a woman on the side of the road. She needed money extended beyond a regular business. It was a Sunday — she is off tomorrow she says, which really means she is working her other job. It must be an embarrassment for her to say she has two jobs. 

I never have done this before, pulled over to buy some flowers. Though I had a slight desire for pretty flowers in my apartment, the desire wasn’t as strong as to pull over on the side of the road during my drive.

I did it mainly for the connection. My heart couldn’t drive by her again, waving her flowers in the air. As she did this I imagined her saying, “Somebody please buy from me. Somebody make this trip not a waste.”

She told me that she drove an hour from her house to get here. I wondered why. But, in any case, I couldn’t drive by. My heart couldn’t take it. It would be a disgrace to my heart, to my grandpa who taught me to always do the right thing. It wouldn’t necessarily be the wrong thing to drive by her. I wasn’t wrong for driving by her the first time — I was distracted by my music, I was in a rush. There are lots of reasons I could have told myself. But it felt more right to circle back and pull over and give some attention to her efforts. Why not do the right thing? Why not squander any justification – in efforts to be efficient, chipping away at what my heart consists of  – that excuses past wrongdoings. Pulling over may admit we have an unequal economy— that this Mexican lady has to sell flowers beyond her full time pay. Yes it would do that. Yes it would mean that I would face head on our current social conditions. 

Though me pulling over doesn’t fix the economy, it still rebuilds my heart. It makes it glow again. I go home and see the flowers and smile. I tell myself that was so much better than walking into a store and buying a bouquet of flowers there. I tell myself this is what life is about, connecting to people. Even if I barely talked to her, I still felt my heart glow. I still felt it saying thank you. I still felt it radiating its beauty outwards. I still felt that beauty sending my eyes to meet hers. We are human, meaning we can’t fix everything. And maybe that’s not the motive. My motive in pulling over wasn’t even solely for her benefit — not to give her money, not to make her feel better, not to end her night off well. Though that could’ve been the case (I’m not denying I didn’t get happiness from those ideas, because helping others is great), it doesn’t mean it’s the only reason I pulled over.

The radiating of beauty from my heart feels good to me. Who is to say that helping others can’t feel good? Does that make us selfish? And then not interested in others? Nonsense! I like my heart to feel good. What kind of person would say that this makes me selfish? I don’t know what that would say of them. But I love the feeling of my heart glowing, of talking with this woman, of listening to my higher good that says, “You know what, I am going to pull over.” I love the feeling of listening to my higher good, defying what the world says about this Mexican woman — that she is dumb or deserves her place in the world. I am defying that. Yes she has to sell flowers on a Sunday afternoon. I am acknowledging that the world is this way — unjust. Is that so bad? To acknowledge the world? To acknowledge the social ecosystem that I inhabit? 

Acknowledging the world helps me to know my place in it. I could never imagine being so in need of money as to have to have to sell flowers. I also can’t imagine on a weekend having to put aside my real desires of sport or leisure to have to stand outside, staring at cars and feeling anxious, wondering if people are staring at you, or worse, wondering if you can provide your next meal. How can that help my understanding of myself and the world around me – how I operate, how I understand things? 

It shows me that maybe I take things for granted. If the woman got more sales than she expected, maybe she would be ecstatic. Maybe she would relish that small joy. On the other hand, I would be mad that I didn’t make more. I would have ended up mad if I couldn’t buy the next on-trend product or save for a dream vacation.

Why am I trying to impress anyway? I don’t want to impress. Why am I obsessed with items anyways? They bring me nothing. This is what we learn from those around us. 

But above all, though we hold some different ideas, and are let down by different things, and are excited by different things, I still can talk to you! I still can make conversation because I still know – deep down below our artificial definitions of things – what it means to be human. As I am buying flowers from you, you tell me that your son is in the hospital and I can still understand that. I still can know to say I am sorry. 

I still hold that humanness. So though pulling over admits that maybe I have an easier life that I don’t quite deserve, just as you have a harder life that you don’t quite deserve, it still makes my heart glow, because we didn’t create this, it makes my heart glow because I am connecting to you. And I will take the beauty of that connection forward with me.