The man was in a hurry to an important meeting. He was already late and barely noticed what was happening around him.
An old man approached him on the corner of the street. He had a rose in his hand.
“Please take this,” he said.
The man looked at his watch and quickly replied that he didn’t have time. Then he continued walking.
After a few steps, he noticed something sticking out of his pocket. It was a small envelope. He stopped in surprise and opened it. There was only one photo inside. He looked at the photo and froze. The photo showed a picture of himself from his childhood, which he hadn’t seen in decades. Even more surprising was that the same old man was standing on the other side of the picture.
The man immediately turned and ran to the place where he had seen him a moment earlier.
The old man was still sitting there.
“Where did this photo come from?” the man asked.
The old man smiled. It turned out that years ago he had been a neighbor in the same neighborhood. When the family moved, a box of old photographs had been accidentally left in the building’s storage room. Years later, the old man found them and kept them, hoping that one day he would meet the boy in the photograph.
The man could not believe it.
They talked for a long time about childhood, the past, and people who were no longer with them.
The meeting, which had begun with an indifferent rejection, ended with a warm conversation and rediscovered memories. On the way home, the man thought about only one thing:
Sometimes the most important meetings in life happen exactly when we are in the most hurry.
