Mr Grumpy
Dear Reader,
I love my morning runs. Every second day I run up the Fraser River next to our apartment on a boardwalk and come back. It's a blessing to be able to live in this beautiful place and to see nature at this time of year, the flowers emerging and it's just a glorious time of the day early in the morning.
On this walk there are different people; some with dogs, some walking, others running as well. I make it a habit of greeting everyone, just a friendly wave and a hello as I run by. And over time we've developed this kind of a kinship with other people walking and running at the same time.
Some of them will look up when I approach them and you can see they're expecting the greeting and we greet and we go and it's just a friendly way of starting the day. As I come back, and if they're still there, I'll just shout something like, 'Have a great day!'
But I have a challenge. I'll call him Mr. Grumpy. Mr. Grumpy walks his little dog, it's a little Mexican dog and maybe the anxiety comes from the little dog, because the dog is really anxious and it's very yappy. Maybe that's where it comes from, but Mr. Grumpy never responds. I've said 'Hi', I've waved, I've said 'Have a great day', but he never responds.
I was tempted to simply say, 'Okay he's full of nonsense, let him go, ignore the guy'. But no, I thought well, maybe I should practice sometimes what I preach. So I'm curious about this guy now. I'm wondering what's going on in his life. Is he really such an introvert that he cannot say hi to other people out in public? Is he very anxious about his dog yapping and maybe causing a disturbance? What's going on?
So I just thought, you know I'll just keep on saying hello, going by, give a wave, expecting nothing in return.
There you have it. How many "Mr Grumpies" do you have in your life? How often do we feel like leaving them alone? They may be on their own journey. Perhaps if we just keep being consistant, maybe if we can reach out and maybe one day he'll look up and say, 'Hello'. Maybe one day the dog won't be with him, or something, or things will be different. I'm waiting for that day, but until then all the other people are greeting and are friendly.
Let's all work together to have one less grumpy person in this world every day and let us not be that grumpy person.
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