Today, I wished I was rich…

We entered a tiny shop in the vast emptiness of the Texan desert. Outside, a couple of round straw bushes whirled across the lonely road. The nice lady saw us coming and opened her dive shop just for us. She walked on crutches; we didn’t ask why. Her husband worked as an diving instructor in the hotel/camping next door (where we are staying at the moment). It has a huge and very deep swimming pool, fed by an underground spring.

We had come to buy goggles for Desmond. The shop had charm, the woman in her sixties, too. She asked if we dived. “No, unfortunately not.” She said it wasn’t really necessary, as one could sometimes see fish from the water surface. If you looked hard enough. “In Malaysia,” I recounted, “we stayed on an island where we could stand in the warm sea water and be surrounded by hundreds of beautiful tropical fish. The water was so clear we could watch those swimming animals easily.”

The sincere woman smiled and asked, “Where is that, is it far away from here?” “Yes, very far away,” I explained. Her blue eyes became moist. “Ah, that’s a shame, I would have loved to see that once in my life. Wouldn’t it be nice if my family and I could go there?”

And in that moment I wished to be very rich. I wished to be able to simply drive to the nearest travel agent and book a few travel arrangements to Malaysia for that lady and her family. Wouldn’t it be nice if we had the means to fulfill other people’s dreams at any time we liked?