The only people I have spoken to today were fellow walkers along the river. One of the conversations was very brief, but it colored my day. My dog was off leash, and she ran up to a lone older woman. It's quite cold today, and the woman was all bundled up, as was I. I never know how people are going to react to my dog racing over to sit at their feet and await being petted, and I usually leash my dog if I see someone coming. But for some reason I didn't for this woman - she must have oozed positivity that I could feel a couple hundred feet away. She removed one of her gloves, bent down, and pet my sweet baby for quite a while. My dog, in her turn, was uncharacteristically well behaved, never once jumping up on her. As I approached, I said "Thank you for petting my puppy" and she said "I thoroughly enjoyed it!" with a huge smile and a loving look at me. As we passed each other on a walking trail along a beautiful river, seagulls swooping overhead, I felt the universe come a bit closer to pure love. That was that. Simple, the simplest thing of all, love.
Ah - see! This is a different kind of conversation and points toward the need for intimacy that we all feel, but rarely get fulfilled. In Finland, there has been studies done how elderly people go to stores for company, handing over change to get skin contact.
Life doesn't take much to be good, but I don't think we are doing enough for it.