A Real Goal Getter: Part III

Continued from "A Real Goal Getter: Part II"

On Saturday I was running through the grocery store collecting stuff I needed for a party later that afternoon.

I first noticed him on the canned vegetables aisle. An elderly man, he steered a motorized chair, the ones provided by the grocery store. His face looked tired and red, as if each breath were a struggle. My reaction was to switch roll my cart down another lane and double back so I wouldn’t have to navigate around him.

I would encounter him later though, in the frozen foods section. And being trapped by his vehicle, I decided to feign a deep interest in whether I’d get frozen spinach or broccoli. And as he passed me, I realized that he was humming. The store music system was playing a really old Dionne Warwick song, “Reservations for Two,” and he was humming along like a paid backup singer.

Huh.

I spent the rest of my visit wondering why he’d feel moved to hum along with such a poignant duet. Did he have a lady love at home he wished to reconnect with? When he got back home, did he hug her a little tighter than usual, making her wonder just what had gotten into him?

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of goal setting. I know my plans will take time and discipline, but I believe that I’m being drawn in new directions and that ultimately a move is in my future. It is tempting during a transitional period to evaluate your current conditions and find them wanting, kind of a “sour grapes” game with yourself. I remember doing that in high school, when I determined that everything about the South was backwards and ridiculous and how happy I was to be getting out.

But I returned to the South after college, and I think in the years I’ve lived here I’ve made peace with what’s bad about it and what’s good. There’s more good than I realized. It didn’t need to change. I needed to change.

And now, as I am forging a new path which will probably lead me out of the South yet again, which will get me back to a place I never really wanted to leave, it’s kind of fun to pass a little old man in the grocery store, and know he was more than some nobody to avoid because he was in a big old awkward chair I didn’t want to navigate around. He was a man moved by an old love song, who seemed to have his own tender memories and who seemed to identify with some of those deeper emotions we all ascribe to. It made him interesting to me.

Maybe this time, when the time comes for me to leave the South again, I can take the good parts of it with me. I think in the midst of new resolutions about goal setting, it’s important to acknowledge that goals allow you to strive toward something, and not run away from something. When I left as a young woman, fresh out of high school, I was running away from all I thought was bad. This time, I think when I leave, I will hold onto all the things which make me strong and capable and healthy. I’m excited to learn how that will impact my plans.

I can’t help but believe it will shape things for the better.

But more on the actual goal setting later…