Monday, July 9, 2012

Day 191 of Your Year to Wellness; Wanting What Someone Else Has


Wanting What Someone Else Has

Early yesterday morning I had to take a trip to the all-night grocery store when I discovered that someone had found my stash of index cards and had used them for their art project (the name of my daughter is being withheld to protect her lack of innocence.) While there I met three women who for a brief moment made me wish for a life that was not my own.

I went the appropriate section of the store, found the note cards and then located about 10 other items that I had not gone there for. I noticed that the young woman who worked at the in-store Starbucks was already having a giant sized blended coffee drink, so I decided to have a green tea. I asked how she had been and she told me that she was within one class of completing her degree to become a nurse. She beamed with pride and  I told her that I was so happy for her.
 From previous conversations I knew she was a young mother and so I was doubly proud. I imagined her walking across the stage at her graduation and then I stepped into my thoughts too deep and for a split second, I wished myself back to my own graduation, only this time I had all the wisdom I now possess.

I caught myself dreaming on someone else’s youth and called myself back to the present. As I shook my head to make things clearer, a beautiful woman dressed for church came in for her morning coffee. Her hair was cut close to her head and I wondered what the style would look like on me. The day before I’d suffered a migraine that made me want to cut my off own hair. I told the woman that she was beautiful and as if she could read my thoughts, she told me that I should do it too. I spent another split-second in someone else’s life, shook my head again and smiled and said “Not yet.”

As I walked back to my car, another beautiful and this time tall woman stepped out of her car and greeted me. She asked how my morning was going and I told her it was fine but that it would be better if I was as tall as she was. She stopped suddenly and said, “Oh Honey, when I was young like you, I wished to be your height with all that hair you have.”

I laughed out loud and told her what my mother used to say, “If wishes were horses, everybody would ride.” She laughed a throaty laugh and went on into the store and I drove home with my note cards and the stuff I didn’t know I needed until I saw it on the shelves.

Now, you already know where I’m going. Sometimes when we see something on or in someone else, we begin to feel “less than” about what we have and who we are.

“You are unique, in all the world there is no one like you, in all the world there is no one who can do what you can do.”

Be YOU
Bertice Berry, PhD.


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