Moving forward

I'm convinced that writing, for me, is a compulsion. My mind constantly swirls with ideas I want to form and spread with my world. Too often, those ideas evaporate before I even have an opportunity to connect them to paper. The one I write about below accompanied me on my trip to the grocery store this evening. I thought it so special, I scribbled it in one of the notes pages of my planner in the parking lot before I began my commute home. 


I think I ate the best six inch turkey on honey oat of my life today during lunch. My mind was full as I shoveled it in staring out the window, thinking and worrying about a call I had to make to the landlord as soon as I took that last, delicious bite.

I watched two girls walk over from the optometrist office next door and pause to take the final drags off their cigarettes, one precariously balancing her cooked lean cuisine sandwich and Diet Dr. Pepper on her hip before heading inside to continue their conversation two tables behind me.

I couldn't help myself from feeling those pricks of judgement in my stomach as Lean Cuisine dropped her cigarette on the ground without taking a moment to stomp it out. The nerve!

Not even thirty seconds later, a couple strode down the sidewalk. A little rough around the edges, battle wounds from life's hard knocks criss-crossing their faces. Without even pausing, she bent down for that cigarette and took a long pull before passing it off to her partner and continuing her conversation.

Moving forward.

Witnessing that small moment from the outside, I couldn't help but consider how interconnected we all are whether we acknowledge it or not.

The exchange of body fluids.
The relief of a few nicotine puffs.
Three lives brushing against each other, separated by one's excess and another's want.
Worlds apart, but moving forward.
Always moving forward.