What I Saw in the Parking Lot

How are you? Well, come on in and happy Tuesday. Good to have you. If it's your first time here today, welcome. It's not dangerous. There's no splash zone.

Come on in. Sit real close. And if you're back after a while, you missed 500 episodes, hang on for the ride. Bye. It is The Daily Boost. From MotivationToMove.com, my name is Scott Smith, having more fun than the boss said I was allowed to have, but I'm the boss of me.

And my fun is to help you a little bit and entertain you and to give you some cool stuff to walk away with and something to think about today. And I'm going to do that. By the way, Memorial Day weekend coming up, the unofficial start of summer here in America.

Unofficial only because it's not the summer equinox, right? It's before that. But it is the official start of summer for most of us, and that means I've got my first sunburn already.

I live in Florida, so when I get my first sunbird, that's the day we all say, well, guess it's time to put the sunscreen on again. Because, you know, wintertime is nothing for us here. We're used to the sun.

But summertime, it's the real thing. But I saw the cutest thing last weekend. The cutest thing. It's the, you know, the spring, summer graduation season.

And for the second time in my life, I saw the cutest thing that you could see. And I've seen it twice. And I saw it within six months. My granddaughter, Maya, she's almost four years.

And she had her second ballet recital. Now, guys, if you have not seen a three-year-old ballet recital, you have missed one of the cutest things in the world. There's like maybe 40 kids on stage, 400 in the audience.

The kids have no idea what they're doing there. They have no idea why they showed up. But they do their thing. Lots of pictures, lots of flowers. Everybody gets flowers.

The cutest thing. Frankly, I like it because we get to go out for pizza afterwards because she likes pizza, so I get to go along with the ride. So don't judge me, please.

But it got me thinking. Let me think about these moments in life. Couldn't help but smile. But a long time ago, I remember something happened to me. I was walking out.

Remember those little small computer stores you used to find in strip shopping centers? Not the Confioze stuff, but the smaller ones. A long time ago, I was walking out of a small computer store many, many years ago with a Photoshop 1.0 software.

On a CD. Yeah, 1.0 on a CD. And I'd paid $800 for that CD. I didn't want to spend that money, but I had a goal, right? I was going to be a predator. Wait a second.

I've said this before to other people. I have to explain that. Not the kind of predator you're thinking about. No, no, no, no, no, no. Not the kind of predator you see on the news.

No, no, no, no, no, no. I was the kind of predator with a camera who edited a lot of video. Wait a second. I didn't sound good either. Hmm. Okay. Predator.

Back in the day, it's what we called a producer editor. I was in the television business and way before we all decided to be predators on YouTube, like everybody these days is like making video in their bedroom on YouTube. Right. But I own an actual television production company.

And we were kind of realizing that digital was like, it was going to change the future. We saw it happening. And so we're going to go from the big companies down to the single predator person who can kind of do it all, right? Kind of jack of all trades.

I thought it was going to make some big television shows. I was going to be unstoppable. That's we all think we're going to be unstoppable. I was going to digitally build my career with a computer in my bedroom all by myself, which is really interesting because who knew it would actually become a thing?

And it did. And I did. And you did. And lots of people did. Anyway, I walked out of that store. I had this grin on my face. And you know the grin, too.

And if you're married, you definitely know the grin. A guy buys something fun and expensive. You know the grin, right? You've seen it? If you haven't seen it, just go down to Best Buy this afternoon and watch the faces of the guy who just bought a 700-inch TV and is trying to fit into this car.

It's crazy. It's a big day. It is. But $800 way back in 19... I think it was about 1990. I could have bought a used car for that, guys. And I bought a CD.

$800 in 1990. It wasn't $800 like today at all. It was like three car payments. It was like a month's rent. It was like 400 Big Macs. Don't ask me how I know that.

It was a moment. You know, I saw something in the parking lot that day that sought me in my tracks. I'm not sure why I remember it. It was a couple and they were older than me.

So they didn't count as actual people. You know what it is. I was like a 25 baby. So anybody over 50, what's that? That's like scenery, right? It's like they're in my way of seeing what's on the other side, right?

You know, it's true. It doesn't matter, you know, if you're heading there yourself and we all are, it's just the way it is. Ask a 25 year old. They go, what are you there?

Boomer. An older person was being pushed in a wheelchair to the car. And it looked like they'd been pushed by their adult kids, maybe. It was quiet. There wasn't a word being said.

You've seen it before, just kind of walking, pushing, not paying any attention, right? The wheelchair didn't make a sound. The kids weren't saying anything. Nobody was crying.

Nothing was happening. Nobody was laughing. Nothing. I saw that, but that isn't what I noticed and made me remember this. Because about 30 feet behind them, to my left, as I looked out on the parking lot, going the same direction from left to right,

There was a baby in a stroller, maybe six months old, kicking their feet, kind of making baby noises, being pushed by her parents, a little girl. They were smiling. They were playing with a little toy. And they were about my age, too.

There's the wheelchair, not making a sound. And there's baby noises behind it, same parking lot. Two strollers, basically strollers, heading to cars that they didn't drive to get there. Neither one of them.

Now, I, again, not sure why I actually noticed this. Because these days I can't remember where I put my keys half the time. Well, not half the time, maybe like 25% of the time. But I do remember this.

I don't know why it stuck. Maybe my whole life has been like that. Paying attention, observing what's going on, to see what's happening. Try to catch these moments when it's...

I had a moment. And it stuck. Not only were they my age, I had kids about that age as well, young ones. I was just trying to figure out life. I had an $800 CD there.

All my dreams packaged up in a little piece of plastic. These days, we just subscribe to that stuff, don't we? At the time, I was busy just like they were probably. Again, I didn't see the older people because the older people were just older people.

You didn't really see them. But combine the two together, the stroller and the wheelchair, the young and the old, it hit me. I'm literally cleaning poopy diapers for myself.

That's what I'm doing. My wife and I are doing the same thing, like two little ones. I cannot wait for those kids to be potty trained. I just cannot wait for it to happen.

And you start thinking about it where I sit today. It's like, it's not going to be too long before somebody will be cleaning mine. Waiting for me to be potty trained. It's not going to happen.

You only get that once in your life. You do ask my mom. My mom's 94. She's up in Virginia. My mom is 94. Almost. Is she 94? She might be 95. I forget.

She's been doing it so many years. I have no idea where she is these days. And she wears diapers too. And she knows I talk about this and she's okay with that.

And she'll pee her pants just because she's lazy. She'll pee her pants just because she can. And she said that I'm 94. I wear diapers. What can I do? I'm going to pee my pants.

And then one day she said to me, I pee my pants because it's kind of warm. I'm serious. I'm serious. I'll tell you what, someday, I hope I'm like my mom.

I hope I don't get to an assisted living facility any time ever. But I tell you what, I'm going to disappoint some 23-year-old kid. It's going to be working there, some woman, somebody. They're going to be cleaning me up.

They're going to be saying, are you okay, Mr. Smith? I'm going to say, I'm just fine. I'm just fine. I thought about this thing like I was 40 years ago when I thought about this.

I'm good. I know where I am. Interesting, huh? So think about this for a second. As you roll through your life, we talk a lot about motivation. We talk about all the stuff we're going to do.

We talk about all the stuff we want to accomplish. And then life just kind of goes and goes and goes and goes and goes and goes and goes. The only difference between those two strollers that I saw, the stroller and the wheelchair, was time.

Yes, a little distance in the parking lot. But the only difference between those two is time. And every one of us is somewhere in that timeline. Every single one of us.

You might be a three-year-old like my granddaughter, Maya, and she doesn't even know that she's on that timeline. She's there. You might be more of the other end of the scale like me going, I know damn well where I am.

How about you? Like I said, it was a moment for me that happened a long time ago and has never left. So these days I'm a little closer to the wheelchair now.

Oh, my wife says, you're not going to do that. Go to the gym. And a lot of really good stuff has happened between the time that I was in this little stroller and the time that I'm heading to wherever I'm heading whenever I get there. I don't know that plan.

Kids grew up. Some things kind of worked. Some things didn't work. How about you? Has some things worked and not worked? I've learned a lot about who I am.

I've learned a lot about why I'm here. How about you? Have you learned who you are and why you're here? Have you learned who you want to be next to in that parking lot sometime when it's your turn?

Most of the stuff I thought mattered. I guess you too, right? It didn't, did it? Almost every single day, the stuff we think is going to matter just doesn't matter.

Most of the stuff that we almost miss turned out to be almost everything. It turned out to be what mattered. And that happens every single day. I spent my life.

My legacy is what I'm doing these days. This kind of work. So I've observed for a very long time. And the more I do it, the more I take a breath and go, what a ride.

Life? Well, it moves fast. Things? Well, things change. Most of it's been good. But you know what? When you think about it, no matter what hasn't been good, at least Photoshop doesn't cost you $800 anymore.

A hamburger, right? But come on. Time has changed. Oh.