In the town where I used to work, I frequently would stop and chat with a woman who owned a downtown shop near my office when I was on my way to lunch, or out for a quick coffee, during my busy day. The shop owner liked to stand outside when the weather was warm, and she was frequently joined by another woman, who was often quiet and seemed to peer right through me. She rarely looked at me when she spoke, and frankly I would almost always get annoyed that she was so off-putting when we would be engaged in simple conversation, staring beyond my shoulder somewhere. "She really doesn't like me," I would think, or just, "She's really not that nice a person at all; I don't have time for this," etc., all those things we think when someone is off-putting or unreadable.
The other day I was driving down the street where that shop is located, and I saw the woman who so frequently looked through me. She was walking along slowly, carefully...and with a blind-person cane. She tapped her way along, with that unfocused look that I so often took for disinterest, dislike, or boredom. She wasn't judging me all those times we met on the street. She had been going blind.
Humbled, and thinking about it.
Where have you been?? Been way too long since you have been posting!! Hope you are back and not going to disappear again. Great "lesson" we can all learn something from! Keep posting as you have so much to share!! :-)
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