I’m in the self-checkout area in Wal-mart. A little girl is screaming. Her mom is livid while feverishly punching buttons, pulling out cash.
Twenty bystanders are holding their breath.
At that moment I shift that world of breathless bystanding, thinking, “I matter. I believe in fulfillment of love in each moment.”
You see, the night before I had let go of the belief, “I don’t matter”, in a Satori game. In addition, all week I had been distilling my “why” to a fundamental belief in “fulfillment”. Could I act on that right now, in this moment, with these people? In this place?
Yes. I could try.
I cross over to the scene and say to the little ball of a girl on the floor, “what a precious person you are.” I stand and say to the mom, “You’re a really great mom.” She responds, continuing her paying motions, “Seriously?!”
“Yes.”
I crouch next to the girl, now huddled beneath the grocery cart. I silently shower her with acceptance.
I don’t know if that intervention mattered to them, but I felt a wave of acceptance and possibility for all of us, a knowing of how a world of radical forgiveness might look, a sense that I do matter and everyone else matters and we can love and accept each other just as we are and that spreading a wave of radical forgiveness along the Appalachian Trail corridor might be composed of many moments like this.
What if playing Satori is practice for Life?
Are you game?