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photo credit: René Ehrhardt

I went shopping the other day. I needed to get some things at the hardware store. You know how it is, as soon as you’ve finished fixing one thing at home, something else breaks. Well, that’s how it is at my place at any rate. Consequently, I always like to have an ample supply of nails, wire, glue and duct tape at home (you probably don’t want to know how I ‘fix’ things).

But anyway, as soon as I saw that the roll of duct tape had come to an end, I hopped into the car to replenish my supply. Like I said, you never know when you’ll need it next.

I got to the store well before closing time, so I had the luxury of cruising the aisles, looking at things I didn’t need but wanted anyway. Hardware stores are always full of that kind of stuff.
Lost in the joys of mindless shopping, I sailed around the corner into the hand tool department and nearly crashed my shopping cart into a little old lady who stood mulling over the hatchets.

She was something else. She was wearing a large brimmed straw hat crowned with plastic flowers and a pair of bright purple coveralls stuffed into orange rubber boots. Seeing as dirty gardening gloves were dangling out of one of her back pockets, I assumed that she had been working in the yard when the need for equipment arose (I immediately felt a certain camaraderie with her). She had possibly been pruning trees as she came upon a particularly stubborn branch. Dropping everything, she ran to get the proper tool to rid herself of the offending limb, or so I imagined.

She stood, contemplating the advantages of one hatchet over the other, ignoring the curious looks from the other shoppers who were wondering why anyone would wear purple overalls with orange rubber boots to go shopping. And I stood, contemplating the woman before me and the fact that she was wearing purple overalls with orange rubber boots while shopping.

She was clearly eccentric. And she didn’t seem to care.

What freedom, I thought. What unbelievable liberty that gave her. Being eccentric had given her the power to be herself, even  if it included strange color combinations in the DIY shop. She needed a hatchet and, darn it, she was going to get one. Now. She obviously wasn’t going to let social expectations inconvenience her and get in the way of her plans.

Usually, I thought to myself, when I see truly eccentric people they’re already pretty old, just like this lady. They’ve generally been through the social convention thing; they’ve stopped worrying about what the neighbors think and have ceased to concern themselves with what everybody else expects them to do. They’ve just sort of begun to finally live life for themselves and revel in the fact that it doesn’t really matter what the others think.

What a pity. What a waste of precious time to wait until you’re old. All the years you squander in ironed trousers attempting to fulfill the expectations of others. Attempting to fulfill the expectations of people you often don’t even know, let alone respect. All the time you spend worrying about what you’re supposed  to do and expected to do, and regretting not doing those things you’d like to do.

Why bother?

Life’s too short to be frittered away on things that don’t matter. It’s too precious to be lived on somebody else’s terms, according to somebody else’s rules. Allow yourself the luxury of doing what you want, wearing what you want and being the person you truly are.

Don’t wait for old age to start swimming against the current. Don’t wait until ‘it doesn’t matter anymore’ before letting your hair down and doing your own thing, even if the neighbors are looking. Life is definitely more rewarding, and a whole lot more fun, if you let yourself be eccentric now, while you still have time to enjoy people looking at you in your purple coveralls and silly straw hat.

Happy Shopping,
Lisa

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