Today We Raised Mountains

Susan (wife/partner/Princess) and I went shopping today. The usual weekly groceries, lunch out, run some errands, the same things we do every week.

Except this week and for reasons unknown we decided to go to a different supermarket. No reason. Reasons not to, really: further away, doesn’t carry our favorites, prices are a little higher, baggers aren’t as careful about heavy on the bottom, light on top, that kind of thing.

We did our shopping. Got pretty much everything we wanted. Picked up a few things that looked interesting. Stopped in the bakery. Sometimes they do a good brioche. Not today, though. We got there too late. Shucks.

We wheeled our cart to the registers. Three free, four not, one with an older woman – I refuse to use “senior” because I am one now – who checked every item she lifted from her cart before slowly placing it on the belt.

She leaned towards the cashier. “I need to know the total with each item.” She frowned more and more as each item slid through the scanner.

“Forty-two sixty. Forty-nine forty-five. Fifty – “

She leaned closer. “I can’t afford that. Please put it aside.”

The cashier did. The next item went through. “Fifty – “

“I can’t have that, either.”

The bagger stopped grabbing foodstuffs and checked his phone.

Another item. “Fifty – “

“No, thank you.”

The woman looked at the things still in her cart and pushed it forward. “I can’t get these. I’m sorry.”

The bagger pushed the cart to the restock area.

I stood at the front of our cart, my usual position, so I can put the gallon jugs of water and similar items on the belt. “Excuse me, miss. I don’t mean to offend.” I pointed at the items now over to the side. “Do you need those?”

“No, no. It’s okay.”

“Because we’d like to give you those as a gift.”

She looked up at me. Her brow furrowed.

“A gift. No need to thank us. No need to tell us who you are. A gift.”

She pointed at one item on the side. “Could I have that?”

“Please take both with our thanks.”

Her chin quivered. “Really?”

Susan nudged me. “Do you want those things in your cart?”

“Are you sure?”

I called to the bagger. “Excuse me, sir, could you bring that cart back. Please put back anything you took out. Bring it all back.”

The woman blew her nose.

I pulled her cart in front of ours, recarriaged what of our groceries I’d already placed on the belt, and place what remained in the woman’s cart onto it. “Please add these to our bill. Bag them for her, though.”

The cashier looked at me and blinked. The bagger put his phone in his pocket and cocked his head as if hearing a strange language.

He added two more bags to the old woman’s cart. “Do you have a way to get home, miss?”

She nodded. I motioned to the bagger. “Please make sure these get into her car or taxi or bus, whatever. Thank you.”

He pushed her cart and walked slightly akimbo, a crewman on a ship sailing high seas.

The old woman hugged Susan closely, almost fiercely, and whispered, “Thank you.”

“Our pleasure. Eat well. Enjoy your gift.”

The woman hurried after the bagger.

The cashier scanned our items slowly, asked us questions about our favorite foods, mumbled he’d never seen anything like that.

“Pay it forward.”

We paid our bill and left.

Back in the car, Susan turned down the stereo. “Did you know that was going to happen?”

“Not a clue. Only that we had to shop there today.”

The best tools are malleable ones, tools that can do anything and take on any shape based on what the workman needs to do, be in spanner, hammer, screwdriver, forceps, shovel, … The shape any tool takes is based on the emotions of the worker in whose hands it rests. It can be destructive, constructive, or neutral, much like emotion itself, and that’s because emotion is Energy in Motion.

Think of Felix the Cat‘s “Magic Bag of Tricks” – used one way it can do anything, used another way it can do anything else.

Money is a tool, not a goal, although I’ve known many who make it a goal and use it as a hammer.

I often tell people “Lift someone’s spirits, you can lift battleships out of the water, raise mountains where there are none.

Today we raised a mountain. Other days it’s a battleship. Both times, it’s lifting the sorrow, sadness, or shame in someone’s heart, taking it from them, giving it to the wind to carry to the clouds and space beyond.

Long ago I invited this community to create oceans.

I invite you again.

This time lift a mountain.