One of the more fulfilling experiences recently for me as been the volunteering of my services to my wife’s auto repair shop in Scottsdale.  About 6 months ago, she needed a shuttle driver to take her customers to work or home that had dropped their car off to be serviced.  Once the car is serviced, the customer oftentimes needed a shuttle back to Airpark Auto Service to pick up their car.  She was down a driver and so she asked me if I would be interested.  I jumped on the idea and have been doing it for the last 6 months.

Yesterday, I picked up an elderly lady from her house that needed a ride to the shop to pick-up her car.  I asked all about her family of two daughters, one of which had 4 grandchildren she spoiled.  She was a widow seeking to survive the 117 degree temperature a week ago in the valley of the sun.

I then asked her about her profession when she worked and she replied, “You probably don’t remember the airline named PanAm that I was a flight attendant on.”  I replied, “Of course I do.”  I asked her about the movie “Catch me if you can” staring Dicaprio about his faking being a PanAm captain and off we went down her memory lane.  As she talked about her past she began to light up in telling me story after story of her past life.  It was fun for me to bask in her glory days and validate her value to those she touched.

How many times in life do we rush from one task to another and miss the nuggets of connection with others because we are too busy.  It’s as simple as taking our focus off what we need to do and asking some questions of those we come in contact with about them.

On this journey, become a student of finding out the nuggets in other’s lives and in the process you might be enriched yourself.