I can’t tell you the reason I didn’t write last week. Not because I don’t want to, but because I literally don’t remember what I was doing.
I don’t know when it happened, but I’ve become extremely interested in the good inside everyone. These past couple of weeks have been really interesting. I went to Vegas this weekend with a portion of my hand-picked family (aka friends), so I ended up taking Friday off, which was a good thing because I had just got a ticket for expired registration tags. For some reason, they make the parking lot at the DMV the size of a 7-11 parking lot, so I had to find parking on a street. I found a wide open street, parked and got out of my car. As I was crossing the street, some guy almost ran me over and started honking at me. I gave him a “wtf buddy” look, and he rolled down his window and with a thick Middle Eastern accent, yelled out, “Sir…you get ticket there.” This random stranger just saved me from getting ticket for parking in a “No parking on Friday’s from 8-10am” area at 9am. How dumb do you have to be to get a ticket in front of the DMV…
I stood in line, and when I got to the front, the guy immediately made me go back to my car to get my old registration. I got back in line and when my number got called, I had this really lovely lady who helped me out. She tried to save me money by having me fill out a form for a one-time waived fee because this was my first time being late, but then realized that I hadn’t paid my registration for over a year. Whoops.
She laughed and told me I needed a smog check as well, so she sent me down the street to get it smogged, and told me to just come back into her window if no one was there. I ended up coming back 30 minutes later to her, and after $370+, she gave me a tiny blue sticker to put on the back of my effing license plate. She sent me off by saying, “This is a $400 sticker…Guard it with your life. Have a good day.”
This past Monday, two bombs went off near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. And large number of people were injured and a handful of people lost their lives in what seems like a senseless act of destruction. Those people were someone’s loved ones. And because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, all their loved ones have left are the memories of them and that day.
I’m a firm believer that everything happens for a reason. That thinking means there is no right or wrong time and there is no right or wrong place. There is just places and times and things that were meant to happen. But it’s hard to rationalize why that had to happen to those people. If God has a plan for everyone, then in my mind, His plan included those people being there at that time and place, and that’s hard to accept.
My grandma has always tells me to do the right thing. And as terrible as those people were for taking those lives, there were individuals in that situation who were doing the right thing. There were people who were running away from the blast, and people who were running towards it to help those that were injured. Strangers helping strangers just because it was the right thing to do: showing love to people who had never done anything for them. And that’s extremely encouraging. As shitty as a situation can get, there will always be good people doing good things.
It’s funny how we can get bummed about where we are in life. We think negatively about all of the positive things that we don’t have. But we hardly ever think positively about all the negative things that we don’t have. Maybe we should focus on the latter rather than the former.
Thanks for reading.
– The Sticker Guarder
