The Mirror That Found Me
Sometimes the most delightful surprises are the ones we never saw coming.
There’s something about getting older that nobody really warns you about.
Like trying to put on makeup when you can’t see properly without your glasses. …and, of course, you have to take your glasses off to put my makeup on!
A bit of a dilemma. 😄
I have one of those little round mirrors at home in Switzerland, with a normal mirror on one side and a magnifying mirror on the other.
And before leaving for Calabria, I thought about bringing it along.
But then I decided not to bother. Surely I could find one in Italy if I needed it.
At some point, I caught myself wondering where I’d find one, whether it would be expensive, and whether it would be difficult to track down.
And then I changed the question.
Hmmm… I wonder what it would take to find a magnifying mirror?
And that was that.
I didn’t go searching for one. I didn’t make a plan. I simply went on with my life.
A little surprise at the market
Not long afterward, we went to a large local market in Calabria.
You know the kind: stalls selling everything from fresh fruit and vegetables to clothes, household items, and all sorts of little things you never knew you needed.
Mercurio stopped at a stall to buy something for his phone.
I was just standing there, waiting.
As we were about to leave, the man behind the stall suddenly decided he wanted to give me a little present.
He looked around, picked up one thing, put it down, considered something else, and put that down too.
Then he disappeared among his things for a moment.
And when he came back, he was holding something in his hand.
A little round, two-sided magnifying mirror.
“This is for you.”
Just like that.
No searching. No shopping around. No figuring out where to buy one.
A complete stranger simply handed me the very thing I’d been wondering about.
That little smile
We thanked him and continued walking.
And I smiled.
You know that little smile you get when something happens, and you recognize it?
That was one of those moments.
I hadn’t imagined someone giving me a mirror. That possibility hadn’t even crossed my mind.
And that’s what I find so fascinating.
We tend to think in terms of what we already know. We imagine the possibilities we can see, the routes we can figure out, the solutions that make sense to us.
But what about all the possibilities we haven’t thought of?
I don’t know why that man chose that particular gift, at that particular moment.
Maybe it was simply a lovely coincidence.
But I do know that it made me smile.
And it reminded me, once again, why I love wondering.
Sometimes life surprises us in ways our minds would never have thought to arrange.
Hmmm… I wonder what little surprises are waiting around the corner… 💗