The Man On The Stool

The Guy On The Stool (Short)

The Guy On The Stool

Kathy and I went to Bozeman, Montana, for lunch and grocery shopping on Sunday.

We have our favorite restaurant we have to visit, the Feed Cafe, oh, so good.

Then we stop off at the best coffee we’ve found in Montana, Treeline Coffee Company.

The baristas are the best.

You can have good coffee and a bad barista, but at Treeline, both are the best.

We decided to sit down for a minute.

I struck up a conversation with a man named Jelani. 

He’s an anthropology professor at the college part-time, and also works in construction.

We were talking about our kids ‘ lives, hard things, and easy.

At one point in the conversation, he said something about how people are so driven to live for work when perhaps we should be working so we can live.

We live in a culture that worships those who produce.

The more you produce, the more value culture stamps on you.

Some people work really hard but have little to show for it, and some work little and have much.

Production measurement is flawed, yet still it’s how we work.

So many things in life are produced by simply being who we are, and we have little to show for it when it comes time to get out the tape measure and put in inches what is unmeasurable. 

I have many friends in the disability community who fit this to a tee.

They may not “produce” as much as their able-bodied counterpart, but much of what they bless society with can’t be measured with the production meter. 

———————

Patron Club Section

———————

What if we had not interrupted our “busy” schedule to sit down and talk with this stranger?

If we had not taken the time to ask a simple question, an ice breaker, this moment would have been lost to a to-do list.

God gives each of us a superpower. 

Mine is connecting with people. 

I thank God for that. 

Striking up conversations like that may not be your thing.

But what if you simply smiled at a stranger today?

What if you said hello, not expecting anything back?

What if you ask a simple question to a stranger?

It’s not gonna kill yah. 

Much more to come.

(There is more to this writing. For that and other more personal content, come join our Patron Club.) https://nas.io/rickdancer/feed/zxva