There is something wonderful that we have seemingly lost in our generation of fast-moving, high-tech, answers at your finger tips.
Over the weekend Ronan and I went for a walk into The Village (a little shopping district a few block from our house) so I could run some errands and we had a very sweet encounter with a perfect stranger. While we waited for my coffee order to come up I noticed two elderly gentlemen sitting at a little table chatting over their steaming mugs. One of the men looked over and smiled so big at Ronan it made me instantly smile back.
He looked up at me and asked, “is his name Billy?” I chuckled inside wondering if he thought we were someone he knew or if he just wanted to spark a conversation.
“No, his name is Ronan” I replied
“Roman?”
“No, Ronan – R-o-n (like November) -a -n”
“Ahhh, Ronan!” He sat back and smiled, looked over at his friend a moment, then turned back to us. I could tell he was thinking and had more to say so I waited and he finally leaned forward and started reciting a line from some beautiful piece of literature. I didn’t quite catch all that he said but I did hear that the quote ended with “to meet upon Ronan’s Rill”. It sounded like old English poetry, and it was beautiful. The man made sure to tell me that a Rill was a river, I was grateful for the explanaton because I had never heard the word. Then he went on to explain that this was a line from Sir Walter Scott’s novel Ivanhoe.
I was so touched that this total stranger would think to stop and recall this line and share it simply because it mentioned my son’s name. I thanked him and made sure to tell him how much I appreciated his thoughtfulness. This experience stayed with me for the rest of the afternoon. Warm fuzzies for sure! It also got me researching Sir Walter Scott, his novel Ivanhoe, and his other writings. I even found that he actually wrote a completely separate novel called St. Ronan’s Well. (**warning – random tangent – This made me smile and give myself a nice little pat on the back. In all the research we did in choosing a name for Ronan I never thought to check if it was a saint’s name. My dad always had a thing with making sure we all had saint’s names. The only reason my mom could name me Jennifer is because it is a derivitive of Genevieve)
This kind of thing just doesn’t happen anymore. People in our generation today would not stop and think of a specific line within a famous piece of literature that contained the name of a baby they just met. The closest I could see happening would be to Google the name and maybe share if they found someone famous or notable with the same name. And that just doesn’t have the same effect.
Now I’m regretting that I was so taken aback by this man’s actions that I didn’t even bother to ask him his name, or share my own. So what have I learned from this?
1. Slow down and pay attention to the people around you. You never know when a total stranger can brighten your day – if you just stop and give them the chance to do it.
2. I really need to catch up on my reading! I love to read and I don’t remember the last time I sat down to read.
2b – I should start by reading some of those legendary pieces of literature that most people read in high school or college. Even if I did read them back then I didn’t appreciate what I was reading.
3. The older generations of people in our world have some wonderful things to offer and I need to get better at being patient and open to listening to them. Too many times I get so caught up in my own life and the things I’m trying to get done that I just breeze past or hurry to get off the phone with the older, and wiser, people in my life. They may move at a slower pace but that is okay, and probably better in some circumstances!
TALL & small 