What am I thankful for this holiday season?

Sometimes things happen to you that turn out better for you than the original thing you had planned.  Does that make sense?  I didn’t think so.  I’ll have to explain…

I was all ready to run my usual Thanksgiving morning Turkey Trot.  This year my wife and I decided to do the one we have done the past couple of years.  It is an informal outing organized by one of our friends.  They contact a group of people, tell us to show up at 8am with something to share (food) with the group and to bring a couple of canned items for the local food bank.  Just for the record (because I think she reads these posts), my wife Kim brought her famous banana pudding.  Since it has bananas in it I’m putting it in the “Healthy Foods” category.  Unlike bananas though, you have to eat it AFTER your run, not before.  Any way, the morning was shaping up like all the others.  I was stretching, drinking coffee and trying to make small talk with all the other people that were there at the start.  I was planning on trying to beat my P.R. of 20:30 for a 5k, but that was 10yrs ago and had me considering professional medical attention when it was over, so maybe not. Then it happened…

A man came through the crowd and said hi.  He is someone I know but not a close friend.  He announced to who ever wanted to hear that he intended to walk this years course!  I put an exclamation point after that last statement because it is a crazy concept to consider.  Walk?  Talk to someone?  Someone I don’t really know all that well?  YES.  Why not?  I did it.  And it made all the difference in the world.  You see, we didn’t have a lot in common, but what we did have in common made for a very interesting and engaging conversation.  If I hadn’t hooked up with this person I would have run the race by myself and rated my success on the time I got.  Instead, I got something much better.  I got a better understanding of someone I barely knew.  I got a new friend!  In this new world we are all living in, with technology INFECTING all of us and our lives, it was nice to just talk.  I miss that.  I’m hoping after this experience to try and engage more people in a conversation.  I think it is a lost art.  This is what I am thankful for…