I’m going shopping today. A bookstore. A UPS store. A mall. Maybe a golf superstore. I have to map it out. I want to hit them in some sort of sequence. I’ll even work in a lunch. There are several places, when I’m out and about, that I like to eat. I even like mall food, and that may be what I choose today. Convenience. Heck. I remember when the downtown Foley’s in Houston had a dining room. My late wife and her grandmother would go there all the time back in the day, by which I mean the late 70s.

And when I say shopping, I mean shopping as in I’m going to look and maybe buy, even though there’s a high probability of the latter. For instance, I want a book, but I don’t have a particular book in mind, and I may find nothing that suits me, although that’s a slim probability. Same with the mall and the golf superstore. I’m going to look. For instance, I’d like a golf shirt in some other color than blue. Here’s hoping there’s a sale. Same with golf balls. I have some. Could use some more. But I’m not buying a $50 box of balls.

All of this could be done on-line. A click here a click there and I’m done. But I need the physicality of a trip. The movement in space and time to see real things and real people. To look at them, and smile. Because, what if, by chance, I smile at someone today who, on this particular day really, really needed that smile. I won’t even know it happened. But they’ll go home happy and pass it along, until maybe one day it makes its way back to me on a day when I really need a smile. And that seems a worthwhile thing to put out into the universe on this a day when I’m going shopping.

John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver's Tale