A Shopping Trip

They told me to get a life, and then walked away without telling what to do or where to go to get one. So I went to the mirror that usually told me the truth. I waved my arms, scrunched up my face and shook my head - it was only the bathroom mirror so obviously it wasn’t telling me the whole truth.

Life had looked back from the little mirror - quiet and a bit silly, but still a life. Told to get a life must have meant that there was something wrong and a different sort of life was needed. Putting on my sunglasses and my hat I wandered through big box stores with gigantic parking lots, small mom and pop corner stores with first come first served parking for one or two, and inbetween downtown stores with parking in my search for ‘a life’.

I saw a lot of packaged and preserved groceries among the fresh red, green, purple, and yellow produce, 
clothes hung in bunched muted shades of fine and coarse fabrics or layered in folded stacks of denim and tweeds, 
art supplies that painted pictures and wrote stories, 
story books for all ages and types, 
'how to' books to build or plant or sew or.....well you get it......, 
hardware stores with nails and boards and tools and.....I suppose you get that too, 
toy stores filled with bright coloured plastic games, ‘practicing adult’ sets, balls and bats….
stores filled with green growing plants and packages of little seeds, shovels and .......there I go again.

My shopping trip was filled with disappointment and frustration. ‘Life’ didn’t seem to have a theme or a place to live. Nowhere, on any of the shelves, had I found ‘a life’....and of course in all of the stores the proprietors wanted money if I wanted anything that looked interesting. 

So I came home and picked up the science fiction book I had been reading, cooked my supper just the way I liked it, put on my comfy sweater and went for a walk under the green shade trees on my street, visited with my neighbours, scribbled this bit of ramble and considered going to a movie. I decided that I’d have to keep looking for this ‘life’ that I’d been told to get, but it would have to wait until later.

“You will never be happy if you continue to search 

for what happiness consists of. You will never live 

if you are looking for the meaning of life.”

~ Albert Camus