Welcome to Walgreens
Cindie Chavez – ©2019
“Welcome to Walgreens” she called to us as we entered the sliding doors of the drugstore. She was standing at the cash register, a middle-aged dark-skinned woman greeting us with a bright smile.
I wish I could say that I’ve always returned the greeting. But I’m almost certain that sometimes her cheerful greeting has passed over my head like the muted department store music, the buzz of the automatic door, or the sound of the product scans beeping – lost in the hustle and bustle of a busy store on a busy day.
But my husband and I have been talking a lot lately about the words we say, especially to those people who work in the service industry – people who are “serving us” in some way. People who we encounter on the periphery of our activities, they’re at our breakfast table because it’s their job, not because they are having a meal with us. It is important to us that they know we appreciate their hard work, we appreciate them. We recognize that service industry work is some of the hardest work anyone does, and we never want to take it for granted.
We’ve been talking about how greeting people with a smile and making eye contact is such an essential part of making a human connection – not just returning their well wishes with a mumbled “You too” without looking up from whatever has our attention.
We’ve talked about our conscious intentions to see people as people – not just nameless workers or servers or cashiers, recognizing that we are all in this together. Human beings. Treating all people with dignity – no matter their job, career, income level, skin color, gender, religion, or any other descriptor.
But this particular day I had been also thinking about the power of the spoken word. One of my favorite new thought writers, Florence Scovel Shinn, wrote “A person knowing the power of the word, becomes very careful of his conversation.”
As we walked through the drugstore that day my mind was on this idea, and I imagined what the world would be like if everyone recognized the power of their words, as well as the power of other people’s words.
I imagined how devout Catholics must feel when they’ve been given a blessing by the Pope, or how it must feel to be blessed by the Dalai Lama, or how one would feel being personally greeted by the Queen or complimented by any highly esteemed person. But truly, we all have the capacity to bless someone.
So I began imagining what would shift in my own life if I truly recognized this as fact. If I chose to believe that every time someone welcomes me, or wishes me a nice day, it is a magical blessing that carries a great deal of weight, something that I can be grateful for, something that I never want to take for granted, a sparkling gift to be appreciated.
I imagined that my words of blessing also carry this magical weight, and that I can return these blessings knowing that they will have an impact, a tangible outcome, a delightful result.
I had all of these thoughts while shopping for mundane things like toothpaste, contact lens solution, and toilet paper. Here on Earth it seems that the magical and the mundane are nearly always all tangled up together.
And as I shopped for the ordinary things required for daily living, I began to stand a little taller remembering that my words are powerful and that I can use them for blessing. All the while feeling grateful that already, so early in the day, I had been the recipient of several powerful blessings.
We finished up with our shopping and the smiling cashier wished us a nice day. I decided that her words were a gift, and so powerful a gift that a nice day was now inevitable. I smiled back at her, and said, “You have a nice day, too!”, feeling grateful that I had the power to bless someone with a nice day.
As we passed through the sliding doors to exit, some other shoppers entered the store and I heard the cashier call out, “Welcome to Walgreens!”
I could hear the smile in her voice, and I hoped those shoppers recognized how lucky they were.
More by Cindie:
Cindie Chavez is known as “The Love & Magic Coach”. She is the creator of MOONTREAT™ – and she has some great free stuff for you at her website: www.cindiechavez.com
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