NOT ON THE SAME STREET, BUT…

Seeing the world, and wondering.  The other day when I was asked what I do that most other people don’t do, I couldn’t think of anything. Everything that came to mind over the days between then and now is not so much where I am and what I am doing, but how I look at where it is that I find myself. I often find myself wondering why something is the way it is.  But I suppose other people go through their lives doing that, too.  This morning, for example, as I was leaving a coffee shop on my bike after a very satisfying time with a small clutch of friends, I saw two men pass each other on the sidewalk and wondered about them and about me. I am guessing that the three of us are about the same age. Of course, I know nothing about the other two guys… but I wonder.  How is it that one of us is apparently homeless, pushing a cart with everything he owns along a San Diego street?  The other man seemed to be moving with purpose into the day. I was on my way home.  

A couple of blocks away I rode past another single shoe, this one with a sock lying nearby… not two shoes and only one sock… and I pulled my bike to the side of the road, rode back, and got the picture. I was a few miles from the hill where I’ve been finding single shoes; so this one can’t have been put there just to confound me and other travelers.  

So perhaps the answer I should have given my friend about how and why the world seems different for me is that I am an active wonderer… wandering and wondering.  Yep!  That must be it…