“You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need.”
~The Rolling Stones

At a meeting this past week I shared what is perhaps an oddity about me that I realized later might be best kept secret. I am not even sure how the subject came up but I told the group about how I actually enjoy going to a store where they are out of whatever it is I have come to purchase. This happens to me with regularity while shopping at the small, though wonderful, grocery store, Trader Joe’s. On more than one occasion I have gone shopping with certain items on my list only to find one of them ‘temporarily out of stock.’ The first time it happened I was somewhat shocked. “You mean I can’t always have what I want?”, I thought but didn’t say to the young store worker. “You mean there isn’t more stashed someplace just waiting for me to come buy it?”

I think one of the reasons that this inability to have my wants met gives me such a good feeling is that, in some ways, it connects me with a time gone by. A time when stores were smaller and there weren’t immense amounts of storage space where extras were kept. A time when you had maybe only one choice of a particular item, at the most a couple of any one thing. A time when merchants stocked shelves with items that didn’t have a shelf life(always a troubling thought for me.) When things could spoil if they sat there too long.

Another reason I find joy in ‘out of stock’ is that it in some way connects me with how the majority of the rest of the world lives. In small towns and remote areas around the world people have a certain self sufficiency that finds its home in the fact that not all things are available at all times. In this country, this is the bedrock of the slow food movement. Does It really make sense that we might be able to have strawberries in January in Minnesota? Living with the rhythm of the seasons means that at some point of the year something will be out of stock.

I recognize that these words come from a place of great privilege. The fact that I can even find a sense of pleasure from not being able to have what I want proves I also have had very little experience with not having what I need. Nearly every day I meet someone who would give anything to have what I most assuredly take for granted. Perhaps in some odd way this ‘out of stock’ experience connects me with these dear ones as well. Whether yes or no, I am humbled by being in their presence and often offer a prayer for their deepest needs, maybe even a chance at a want or two.

In the grand scheme of things finding a particular item at the store out of stock is small potatoes, so to speak. But I am thankful for the opportunity it provides, to reflect on all I do have, to connect with the experience of the wider world, and to count my blessings. Over and over again.

On these amazing summer days, much is ‘in stock’. May this weekend find you celebrating the gifts of this season, one which brings some of nature’s finest beauty and plentiful bounty. And may you,too, find occasion to count your own blessings.