The wonder of co-ops

"One wonder?" you wonder. "How could she choose just one to celebrate?"

Really, I'm just saving other wonders for other days, although I'll give a little shout out right now to the joy of shopping in a bulk section and scooping your own flour/spice/snack/tea from a bin amongst an excitingly vast row of bins. Today, though, I'm going to focus on the wonder of who you'll meet in a Madison Market or PCC, that you maybe wouldn't meet at a Safeway or QFC, and what inspiring words said person might say...

The other day, I stopped by a store (indeed, a co-op) to pick up some fruit, etc. to restock my various food shelves (p.s. I'm trying to buy new edibles only as I eat the old-- not an easy thing to do turns out; sometimes you want a new box (or bulk-foods bag, as the case may be) of cereal before you finish what you have).

After wandering a while and sampling some soup, I ended up standing in the produce section, weighing and weighed down by my options, desires, and knowledge. I really wanted apples, they being my favorite food, and maybe my favorite fruit (I have yet to be convinced that if they are the one, they must be the other...). This being the U.S., land of endless choice, there were many varieties available-- some more local, others more tasty, some more organic, others more pricey. I wanted the Braeburn, but also have the character flaw (common, I think, among many of us) of being drawn to the cheapest grocery option. I knew buying organic was important for the land where the apples were grown (and maybe, but less importantly, better for my own health), but buying local would lessen my ever-oversized, much-talked-about carbon footprint. What was I to do?

The point of this story is not that I ended up getting local (yay!), organic (yay!) Granny Smith (hmm...), but that while I stood there pondering, I noticed another shopper also staring heavily at apples. I made eye contact and he said doggedly, humorously, and profoundly, "I'm just trying to do the right thing."

In retrospect, I think he meant he was trying to shop according to his wife's wishes-- to pick out apples that she'd like. But I was so struck by the simple fact expressed in that moment that it is a burden to know what the right thing is and then to convince yourself that it is worth doing; it is comicly ironic that doing the right thing is so damn hard; and it is profound that people keep trying to do the right thing, in matters as small as apple-buying, in spite of the challenges leveled against them.

Anyway, I am encouraged several weeks later when I think of this man and his attempt at choosing rightly, his self-grace at knowing he might choose wrongly despite his efforts, and his choosing to go on as best he could. May we all do the same.