The Best Things I Found Weren’t Lost

I’ve found money on the ground before.
Coins. A few dollars. Once in a while, something that made me look around and wonder who had dropped it.
But none of those are the best thing I’ve ever found on the street.
The best things have been much harder to pick up.
I’ve found evidence of people.
A grocery list lying in a parking lot, written in someone’s hurried handwriting.
A child’s mitten sitting by itself on a sidewalk.
A flower growing through a crack in concrete where, by every reasonable measure, a flower had no business growing.
Little pieces of ordinary lives that somebody left behind without ever knowing another person would stop and notice them.
I think that’s what I like about walking through the world with my eyes open.

You discover that people leave traces of themselves everywhere.
A chalk drawing slowly disappearing after the rain.
A penny someone decided wasn’t worth bending down for.
A receipt from a dinner you know nothing about.
A feather resting somewhere it wasn’t yesterday.
None of it belongs to me.
Most of it isn’t valuable.
And still, sometimes I stop.
Because somewhere along the way, I started believing that noticing things is its own kind of gratitude.
The world doesn’t always hand us grand revelations.
Sometimes it leaves something small beside the road and waits to see whether we’re moving too quickly to notice.Maybe the best thing I’ve ever randomly found on the street isn’t one particular thing at all.
Maybe it’s the reminder that ordinary doesn’t mean insignificant.
There are little stories scattered everywhere.
Most people walk right past them.
I like knowing that sometimes, I don’t.
One Quiet Question
What have you passed a hundred times that might look different if you stopped long enough to really see it?

— Casey Edwards
Voice With a Purpose