Monday, August 15, 2011

A morality tale for the slightly tarnished



            My rule of thumb is this: Live the little moments well and the big ones take care of themselves.
            Like the cashier at the convenience store who caught me glancing through a tabloid while in line to pay for gas. As I offered up money for the tabloid, she looked both ways and whispered, “You don’t have to buy it; you can look at it and put it back.”
            We grinned at one another in a moment of absolute understanding.
            The next day, filing random thoughts, I didn’t remember the stories in the tabloid. But I remembered the lady at the convenience store. The subtext of life is actually the text, I decided. Or as someone put it, “It’s not how you behave on the dais when you’re being honored, it’s how you behave on the way to the ceremony.”
            You and I are destined to dispense nobility in those odd, awkward asides where nobility and grace and meanness get defined. The thing is that for the very best stuff you ever do, nobody will hand you an award.



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