I’ve learned to separate the chaff from the grain and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away if I’m ever to be happy. There will be something every day to potentially make us happy or make us sad. Like wheat, a potentially nutritious food, the grain is good, but the chaff is not.

The Chaff

My 42 year old son and I were having a nice day shopping in Columbia Maryland with my youngest daughter after the holidays. My son has been a homeowner there for more than a decade after moving there after graduating from Towson University.  He is a responsible young man, VP of HR at a local company, teaches an Introduction to HR Graduate level course at his Alma Mater, and a frequent guest on WHUR radio. He has none of flags that should “frighten” diverse. And yet, after a wonderful day of shopping, I asked my son to show me the new home he was purchasing.  We proceed down a main thoroughfare in my old 12-year old Mercedes Benz and a policeman coming towards us in the opposite lane, quickly did a U-turn almost causing an accident.  He was a few cars behind us and followed us as we made several turns to reach his new home.  We pulled into the driveway and the policeman continued driving past the house and actually parked at the end of the street. We shook our heads, all too familiar with racial profiling and yet tiring of it.  Ironically, we were just talking about that very same thing.  After about fifteen minutes in the house we left to go to his current home.  The policeman was still at the end of the street waiting. He must have gotten distracted and didn’t see us leave.  But the experience is troubling and annoying to say the least.

THE GRAIN (FOCUSING ON THE GOOD STUFF

PEOPLE ARE ALSO AWESOME! My 5-year old grandson Alexander lost his wallet with $53 in it at Kohls during the holidays. A man came up to him and asked why he was crying. He explained that he had lost all of his Christmas shopping money. The stranger asked him how much he had lost and through his tears he managed to say $53. The man reached into his pocket, gave him the $53 plus $20 more to buy a new wallet or whatever.

AMAZING! And, even MORE amazing, the store called several hours later to report that someone had found the wallet and turned it in WITH ALL THE MONEY still in it. My daughter being such an awesome mom told him that he would have to pay it forward and pick a charity to donate the money to. She explained that since he had received such kindness from a stranger, he should give to a stranger and make someone else as happy as the stranger had made him when he was so sad. Life offers such teachable moments if we learn to recognize them.

“There’s so much GOOD in the WORST of Us, and so much BAD in the BEST of Us, that NONE of Us can JUDGE the REST of Us.”