Sometimes a few chords can go a long way...
After weeks apart, my husband came to visit me on a work assignment in South Africa. Enjoying our couple’s time together, we decided to go on a road trip to a traditional farmers market an hour from where we were staying. It was a piping hot Sunday afternoon, the market was crowded with families, there were scents of barbecued meat in the air.
It was a wonderful day but for some reason, I could not help but feeling down. I knew my husband would leave again the next day but I, I would need to continue on in South Africa for the foreseeable future. Our ways would part again. I did not quite manage to enjoy the moment as thoughts of loneliness were quietly creeping up on me over and over again.
But then all of a sudden, everything changed. As we walked through the market, I saw this elderly man sitting on the side of a fence, holding a pretty ragged guitar. Wondering what the instrument might have been through, the man gently started to play and as the first tunes filled the air, I could instantly feel a little tear building up in the corner of my eye. After a few introductory cords, he raised his voice and started to sing along: “I see trees of green, red roses too, I see them bloom, for me and you…” As I listened to his voice and held my husband’s hand, I gazed over the adjacent fields and lilac trees, I truly thought to myself, what a wonderful world we live in.
So whenever I hear this song nowadays, in my mind I am incredibly grateful to this stranger back there on the farmers market in South Africa, for reminding me that there is beauty in every moment. Sometimes you just need a little help seeing it.
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