Lost opportunities have the power to haunt. 

Some years ago, a woman related something that happened when her daughter was young.

While checking out in a grocery store, she heard the woman at the next register saying she did not have enough money to pay for all her groceries. Planning how she was going to get her daughter and her own groceries to her car, the young mother realized—too late—that if she had not been so self-absorbed, she could have offered to help pay for the other woman’s groceries.

Years later, her oversight still haunts her. That young mother is now a loving grandmother, thoughtful of everyone she encounters. Like all of us, she has regrets. One of them is how years before, failing to notice what was happening in someone else’s life, she missed the opportunity to provide assistance.

How easy it is for each of us to become so preoccupied with our own lives that we fail to notice situations in the lives of others.

And so, not paying attention, we miss an opportunity to do good.