“Good morning! You know what? I do this every morning.”<\/p>\n\n\n
He was leaving the gas station convenience store. I was pumping gas.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
I felt compelled to ask the question he wanted: “Do what?”<\/p>\n\n\n
He stopped walking and lifted the plastic bag in his hand. “Buy two big cans of cheap beer. Better than coffee to start a morning!”<\/p>\n\n\n
And just like that, he shared his greatest burden with a complete stranger.<\/p>\n\n\n
“You know what else?” He stood where he had stopped.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
“What’s that?”<\/p>\n\n\n
A broad smile swept across his face. “I don’t know why I do it!” It was like he had told a joke. “I am the one doing it, but I don’t know why.”<\/p>\n\n\n
I don’t think there is anything I could have said that would have made a difference, but I still feel guilty for not saying SOMETHING as he turned and walked towards his vehicle.<\/p>\n\n\n
God help him. I hope he is able to put a name to it some day.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Without naming a thing, there is little hope of exercising authority over it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“Good morning! You know what? I do this every morning.” He was leaving the gas station convenience store. I was pumping gas.\u00a0 I felt compelled to ask the question he wanted: “Do what?” He stopped walking and lifted the plastic bag in his hand. “Buy two big cans of cheap beer. Better than coffee to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3401"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3402,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3401\/revisions\/3402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}