There are few places where I expect complete strangers to strike up a conversation. The supermarket wasn’t one of them. Yet, for the past few years, it has become one of the friendliest places I know.

Twice a week I push a trolley that looks as though a rainbow has decided to go shopping. Apples, oranges, bananas, mangoes, berries… enough colours to make the fruit aisle look slightly emptier than when I arrived.

Without fail, someone smiles and says:

“That’s a healthy trolley!”

“Is all that for you?”

“Do you own a restaurant?”

One lady even looked inside and said:

“You must be the healthiest person I’ve ever seen.”

I laughed.

“I was actually just trying to buy some fruit.”

The conversations don’t stop there. People tell me about their allergies, their diets. Their New Year’s resolutions. The fruit they wish they liked.

One lovely lady now greets me with, “Look! I’m eating more fruit now!”. That always makes me smile.

But there’s one sentence that get my curiosity, when some people say:

“Oh no, I couldn’t do that.”

I’ve been wondering about those words. Not because I think everyone should fill their trolley with fruit. But because we seem surprisingly quick to decide what kind of person we are. I have heard:

“I’m not musical.”

“I’m not creative.”

“I’m not sporty.”

“I couldn’t eat like that.”

Perhaps we’ve all written a few chapters of our story before life has finished introducing the characters.

The truth is, my trolley didn’t become colourful overnight. It happened one piece of fruit at a time. Maybe that’s true of most worthwhile things.

Not just healthy eating, learning an instrument, writing a book, finding a little more peace. Or simply becoming the person we’re slowly growing into.

It rarely begins with a full trolley.

Usually…

it starts with one small choice.

Until next time,

Carlos