Other Reflection

“You can’t walk past here without smiling!”

-Ballpark Customer Service Agent

Other Reflection

There was a stream of people walking from parking lots all around the ballpark.  It made me feel anonymous; almost like a small fish in a huge school, in a larger ocean of life.  I didn’t know anyone flocking with us, but it didn’t matter.  We were all swimming in formation toward openings that would allow us access to a baseball game.

Most passing faces were bright and cheery. For the most part, individuals were in smaller groups made up of friends or members of the same family.  Some, near the entrance, were selling or trying to buy tickets to the game.

One man, on an opposite street corner had a cardboard sign hanging around his neck; “I need tickets.”  While, on the corner across the street, other people were holding tickets for sale high in the air asking as many as crossed their path to buy what they were offering.  I thought it was interesting to see that the cardboard-sign-man never accepted the offer to walk across the street to buy the tickets being offered.

I observed, but didn’t take the time to ask why.  I simply absorbed the view and continued on my way, noting that some images remain in the eyes that behold them. They don’t reflect, reproduce or become a sign to the world around them.  It was a lesson in anonymity; how one can be surrounded by others and still be alone, unnoticed and without impact.  But the opposite, the truth, was about to be exposed.

I was still thinking about being anonymous as we swam with others up the stairs, through the concourse and out toward the grassy knoll toward a tree covered destination, when a voice crashed through my ambivalence.  “You can’t walk past here without a smile!” a man with a guest services shirt blurted out to me in jovial fashion.

The words were as the sound of a crashing mirror!  I turned and smiled.  He smiled back and gave a little laugh.  Even in this huge, flocking & shifting school of humanity individual actions and emotions are reflected back to their originator.  While it’s easy to believe we live lives of isolation, the contrary is true and once in a while that truth is declared by someone we don’t know and will likely never see again.  Everything we do has an impact on everyone and everything around us; “Other Reflection.”  It is reflected back again and again.

Keeping other reflection in mind as you go through your life will help you to focus on creating what you want to see in your world.  If you create it, it will always come back to you.  Reflect on that.  Will you?