I don't know exactly when it started or why; however, I was only precisely aware of the thoughts in my head once my sister sent me a text. The text wasn't to me; specifically, it was a group text that the three of us kids put together to keep in touch before, during, and after my father died. Jan said, "where did all the guilt come from, and why is it showing up now?"
I didn't overthink her comment until one day, quite unexpectedly, I found myself thinking about a trip that Linda and I had made to Cancun. The trip was part business but mostly pleasure, and with the business side taken care of, Linda and I found ourselves walking around the shops and centers near the beach. We had a couple of hours to shop before our bus arrived to take us back to the hotel, and Linda and I were looking for a bar named Senior Frogs.
Linda and I had a previous trip to Cancun sometime in the late 1980s. I was working for another company at the time; however, they, too, believed in rewarding good performance with vacation travel and we had won a trip to Cancun for four days and three nights. I had never seen water so blue, and the trip was mesmerizing.
Linda and I don't drink alcohol; however, we found ourselves eating a late lunch at Senior Frogs when the happy hour started, and we enjoyed the songs and party up until they threw a waiter out the window and into the bay. Then, unfortunately, the place was starting to get rowdy, and I took that as our cue to leave. So now we walked the streets fifteen years later, hoping to have lunch at the same bar before returning to the bus.
We enjoyed our late lunch and arrived at the intended location shortly after the bus had arrived. Before boarding, a small Mexican family approached us selling beads. The mother was probably Linda's age, a young girl about 11 and the cutest four-year-old that made you want to throw money in her direction.
I dug into my pocket, pulled out some cash, and bought whatever my pocket change would allow. I asked for a quick picture, and we got on the bus. As we sat, I watched the small family outside make a small fortune selling beads to salespeople before boarding. I should correct what I just said; the four-year-old made a small fortune selling beads.
At first, I didn't overthink it until I happened to look at the eleven-year-old girl. She stood by her mother and sister, offering the same beads, but not a single person, including myself, paid her any attention. The more I watched, my heart ached for this young girl. What were we teaching her? That what she offered had no value? That she was invisible? I dug through my pockets to find some cash, and before I could rise from my seat, the bus started to move.
I think about her and others that have passed through my life. For the most part, I can't remember faces or circumstances; however, there are a select few that I'm sure a loving Heavenly Father put me directly in their path to make a difference, and I failed. The guilt isn't something anyone warns you about as you get older. I'm not sure why these episodes choose this time in our lives to manifest themselves in our consciousness (perhaps it is the ordinary course of becoming more humble, perhaps not). However, I do know that I am much more attuned to the saying, "Be Kind, for everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about." [^1] I guess that includes being kind to past versions of myself too.
Footnotes:
[^1] The quote seems misattributed to Plato or Philo of Alexandria. However, the author Ian Maclaren penned the words, “Be pitiful, for every man is fighting a hard battle” in the 1897 Christmas edition of The British Weekly. (Ian Maclaren. (2022, November 17). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Maclaren)