the cigarette.

Let me tell you a story about something I witnessed last week while sitting on a bus. There were only a few days left until Christmas, and Spring Garden road was full of shoppers scurrying from store to store filling their arms with bags and gifts. The people were walking with purpose, rarely stopping for anyone.

I am an avid people watcher. I cannot help it, people just are so fascinating to watch. Watching interactions, and facial expressions, creating stories in my mind about the lives of those I am 'watching' is a little game I like to play with myself quite often.

For those of you who don't know Spring Garden road, it is quite a busy street for pedestrians in Halifax. In my opinion it is the most busy street for walking traffic in the city. People from all walks of life are always crossing here and there, making it a very slow drive for those in a vehicle. I being on a bus, and being the people watcher I am was not too upset about the slow drive down Spring Garden. If it were any quicker I probably would have missed out on witnessing a moment that brought me to tears.

From my seat, I could see a very well dressed man tucked away in a little nook in a wall of one of the buildings along the street. He had his hair combed just so, and his scarf was perfectly tied around his neck, he wore a thick wool dress coat with buttons up the front, dress pants and nice leather shinny shoes. He was lighting up a cigarette. I am not sure what made him stand out to me, but I decided to watch him for a moment. Then something else caught my eye. Only feet from the nicely dressed young man, there was a scruffy homeless man routing around on the ground for cigarette butts.

At about the same moment that I noticed this scruffy man, with worn hands, and worn shoes and clothes that would have needed a goooood washing, the well dressed young man looked over and saw this man as well. It was interesting watching his face, trying to figure out what he was thinking about while watching this scruffy character. The young man reached into his pocket and pulled out his box of cigarettes, taking one new cigarette out of the package. In one grand movement he stretched his arm out to the homeless man, with a grin from ear to ear and offered his little nook companion a cigarette. My eyes began to well as I watched the man look up from the ground; his smile was just as big as the one on the face of the young giver. There was a split second where their hands were both stretched out, one giving and one receiving, their eyes locked on one another with smiles as bit as the cheshire cat.

The young man gave the older gentleman a light, and they stood there together in the little nook, with people walking past them so unaware of what just took place, while I sat there on the bus as it started off down the road breathless and teary eyed from witnessing maybe the most beautiful interaction I had seen in a while---over a cigarette.

There I had been, people watching/judging from my loft seat on the metro transit bus when all it took was a moment of compassion from a well dressed man to a scruffy homeless man to rock my world. The world kept spinning, the Christmas shoppers still scurried on by, and there it was, a beautiful moment, a moment full of love and all it involved was a little cigarette.

Sometimes I think I need to take a step back and look around, looking for the small beautiful moments that I so often miss out on because I am like one of those quick stepped shoppers with a mission and a plan.  When really, there are moments like this that I am missing out on!