The following is an actual account of my life experience:

My iPhone screen has been cracked since May. Despite how it may seem, I don't actually know how to life in America anymore and so I haven't yet replaced the screen because I don't know where to go besides an Apple Store here.

No, I didn't bother to google it.

So I go to the Apple Store in Santa Monica which is a 15 minute walk from where I'm staying last night.

They tell me I'll need to wait two hours just for an appointment at the Genius Bar. I ask to make an appointment for later, I get one for tonight, and I roll up my sleeves and clear my schedule for iPhone screen surgery.

I go back to the Apple Store for my appointment tonight and wait for 45 minutes for a genius lady to come tell me that actually the phone can't be fixed tonight because there is a backlog. I can drop it off though and pick it up tomorrow afternoon.

She was perfectly nice about it, but of course when you've waited five months and 24 hours and 45 minutes and have finally gotten your shit together enough to penetrate your own backlog, and when you need your phone for literally everything you have in your schedule tomorrow, it's real easy to get GRUMPY about that news.

I immediately recognized that I was grumpy. I realized I needed an attitude adjustment, pronto, because it was not this sweet woman's problem that I've been delaying my needs for five months.

And in the drop of a hat I'm talking to her about what I do and what she does and I get the cliffnotes of her delightful life story while she fills out a work order for me.

And just like that I'm happy as a little clam again because all I really needed was a little connection after all. We bonded about traveling the world and basic human things like grief and heartbreak and love and the pope and it was literally like hitting the reset button on my evening.

In all cases we have a choice about how we want to show up in the world. In most cases a little connection with, and genuine interest in, a stranger is all it takes to make things joyful again.