Epsilon

Tonight we had our second "talking about religion in arbitrary locations around town" session at a Starbucks out on Westheimer. Because I had some handy, I brought a tin of fudge with me--sadly, most of the people who showed up expressed skepticism about eating anything the single guy brought (although one person did comment that "it was worth the calories")--I think there's a parable about this, but that's a comment for another post.

One thing about coffee shops in a town with colleges (it just feels wrong to call Houston a "college town") is that people study there. Beside our table was a girl studying something--I don't know what it was, but it was something that was worth spending hours on. Something in my gut told me that she could use some fudge--either divine inspiration or neurochemical imbalance (admittedly, these are not mutually exclusive choices) moved me. Still, it's the kind of thing that you feel like an idiot for doing.

So, as we were packing up our things at the end of the session, I weighed the options. I know it was a choice that almost surely was irrelevant to the lives of everyone involved--it would be nothing more than an epsilon of compassion--but some of the most interesting choices I've made have seemed irrelvant at the time--eating a burrito instead of pasta, making a wrong turn that got me somewhere at just the right time, sitting at this table instead of that table.

If there are two things in life I've learned, it's that it's never wrong to give chocolate to a lady and that epsilon is, in fact, greater than zero. I dawdled around, waited until nobody I knew was around, put the fudge on her table, and walked out the door.