We Can All Learn From Each Other

I was sitting around the Y one Sunday morning, eating my oatmeal and having a cup of coffee. You might think that's a strange place to have breakfast, but I'll tell you why I do that. Sunday morning I take a strength training class from 8:15-9:15. At 10am I like to take the water aerobics class. What to do for 45 minutes? Eat breakfast sounds good to me. So I bring my plastic container and my individual packet of Mom's Oatmeal (chai flavor), available at Henry's. It's delicious. I make my oatmeal with instant hot water offered by the Y, pour a cup of coffee, and sit down to breakfast. It's delicious, and it always seems to start a conversation.

A few weeks ago I got to talking to a 35 year old mom of 2 small children, and it brought back so many memories of myself at that age. Balancing work and children, hardly having time for myself, maybe having a few hours a week to exercise, never having time to read a book. She was telling me about a book called The Blue Zone which she has been trying to read for months. I'm going to check it out at the library, because the topic of the book is near and dear to my heart. It describes various cultures where the people live to be very old, and tries to determine the common thread that makes all these people from diverse cultures live so long. I will report on it after I read it, but I was telling her about the Greeks, one of the longest living people on earth. Oh, she was so excited that I knew that. She said she had just read about the Greeks. I told her about my blog and that I just written about why Greeks live so long.

She then started to tell me about her children, and how both of them had been biters. I told her my 19 month old grandson liked to bite, but his was always playful. Her children, however, were biting out of anger and frustration. She had taken them to a specialist in Encinitas who did some type of extreme therapy that stopped the biting immediately. (I didn't want to ask what it was). I said that did not sound like anything my grandson needed, as I thought his was simply testing.

What's the point of all this? The point is that we can all learn from each other. You never know where or when you will meet someone who will change your life. Did she change my life? No, but she did recommend an interesting book to me, and I offered her a few tidbits that she might not have thought of. We both enjoyed our 15 minute chat. Recently my son David was standing on the corner waiting for the light to change, started talking to an attractive woman standing next to him, and 45 minutes later, they were exchanging phone numbers. So I say, you never know where or when you will meet someone that might change your life. It's so important to keep your mind open to new people and new ideas. You might just be sitting at Starbucks having coffee next to someone who could become your new best friend.