There once was a girl who worked at a cute and very busy bakery. She was not quite sure how she got her quaint little job at the quaint little bakery, yet she did. She has been working at the very same bakery for almost 2 years. She is very comfortable in her routine of going to bed early, to wake up early, to catch the early bus, to take her several neighborhoods over to her bakery job where she stands between a wall and a glass case all day.
She watches people flow in and out of the bakery all day long. Strangers, tourists, locals, first timers and the regulars. All peculiar to this girl, who stood behind the counter. She saw everyone as happy. At least, that is, happier than her. Even when they were to argue with their loved ones over the choice of sweet – a pastry, a bread or a cake. Everyone who wandered in had time in their day to stop and wander in somewhere.
“Here is the place they wandered?” she wondered, “What’s so special about here?” She would see little girls, with bright red skirts and vibrant blue hats pass by on the street, with matching knee socks, holding their mother’s hand. The little girls curls would bounce and the girl in the bakery thought about her childhood and how she never remembered her curls to bounce like that. She also doesn’t remember matching knee socks.
The bitter old women came in during mid-day. They wanted discounts on their breads since they were not pulled out of the oven upon their arrival, but made in the early morning, when all the baking for the day was done. “It will be stale by the time I arrive home!” they complained. The girl never took the bitter old women too seriously, after all there was a reason they were bitter and she was sure it was not because of her.
The down-to-business business crowd that would stop by in the later afternoon. When the sun reclined back after a long days work, lighting the sky yet not warming the air. The men would order a treat for their sweet. Something so lovely decorated, the girl could cry at the simple beauty of an intricate design. It was a birthday, an anniversary or just a night made better with a baked good. The girl wanted to share the beauty of a cupcake with someone.
Instead, she sold the cupcakes to someone so they could share it with someone else. It left the girl feeling just a bit outside. She never knew that being surrounded by people all the time would leave her to feel so utterly alone all the time. Even when she was working with a befriended colleague. The girl would listen to her stories of a life worth living.
The girl would imagine this life of adventure, freedom, everything going right and the girl wondered how they had the same job yet such drastically different everything else. So the next day, the girl decided to miss her early bus and walk the early morning streets. Being on foot she went a different route than the bus would have taken her. She found a flower shop opening up for the day with a man watering the brightly attuned blossoms.
She pulled a red blossom from the container and held it to her nose. The crisp morning air chilled her exposed calves and she closed her eyes and breathed in the world. The man smiled. She then reached into her bag to pull out her coin purse and asked the man how much the single blossom would cost. He held the hand she offered the change with, kissed it and told her it was a gift.
Still touched when she arrived to the bakery, she went into the kitchen and picked up an un-frosted cupcake. She began to frost it the way she had seen the baker do time and time again until she had finished her very own beautifully decorated sweet. Although it was beautiful, it was not her. She took another cupcake and began to frost the top as if it were a beautiful red flower, like the one resting above her ear.
The baker was impressed with her floral design and asked her to do some more, to sell. The girl designed one flower for every color of frosting. They were the most popular item in the bakery all day long. When a person ordered “one of those flower cakes” she would smile as the person didn’t realize they were buying a piece of the girl, a piece of her soul that opened because of one red bloom.
Adventures of the untoward 
Everyday we have the opportunity to change another person’s day through simple acts of kindness. A flower, a compliment, a simple smile or eye contact. We are so powerful and yet so stingy in our gifts. Resolve to by a light in someone else’s day and then notice what it does for yours.