Lucky Coin

"Penny, penny give me luck 'coz I'm the one who picked you up..." or so the line goes...I chant this line silently to myself every time I chance upon a coin on the sidewalk.

One morning as I rode the bus to work, a family with two kids sat across me. The little boy couldn't contain his excitement when he found a one peso coin on his seat. He showed it to his mom who couldn't care less and scoffed at him. I watched their exchange amused by the scene... the jaded mom and his hopeful son.

I can't help but smile thinking of how genuine, how real the joy of the son in his treasure. I remembered that I too just the other day picked up a peso on a jeep. As it turned out, that peso was a blessing when I was a peso short of my fare. Life's little blessings indeed.

Now that I'm older and supposedly wiser, I find that I have less moments of simple joys. My life seems distracted and uncertainties seem to hang over me like a dark cloud that I fail to see it's beauty. How wonderful it would be to see beauty in the eyes of the child in the raw. Unpretentious. Unintentional. Accidental.

Oftentimes, the longer we process what we see, our critical self takes over, taking apart the totality into tiny pieces--- judging each piece by piece until we can no longer appreciate it.

09062006