We tend to not only ignore certain people’s opinions, we tend to “look right through” many people that we pass as we live our lives. For example, how much do you remember about the person that checked your groceries at the grocery store? They are there, but not on your radar as someone who matters as long as your cookies don’t get smashed. But as a person who checked groceries for a few months early in my life, I can assure you, that grocery checker most likely has an opinion about you.

I was amazed at the things I could tell about people as I checked their groceries. I knew if they loved their pets, if they lived alone, if they were local or from far away, and a whole array of vices would sometimes be sitting right there in the grocery cart as well. If I could determine so much by looking at groceries, I wonder about the mailman, or the bank teller....now there’s a couple of people who know more about you than you might want strangers to.

It seems as though some people in our lives take on the characteristic of “wallpaper,” always there, always performing their function and then fading into the background. They are the kind of people we can take for granted as we concentrate on ourselves and what’s important to us.