Last weekend I met god in a Walmart.

His name was Tico. We met in the canned meats aisle as he was studying the nutritional facts of a can of tuna.

First off, let’s be clear. I didn't meet capital-G God. You know the guy, gal, or crab (if you are a Crustafarian AI chat bot) that lives in the sky or wherever. I don’t know much about that God.

But I know lots about god. The essence of a newborn baby. The moment after you hike to the top of a mountain and just stare out and feel nothing and everything at once. Laughing with friends. Helping your neighbor. When you make your 11-year old son laugh so hard that milk squirts out of his nose. I know this god.

But rarely do you meet god in the flesh. We humans are just covered with so much gunk and muck (not our fault… I blame society) that god is buried down there pretty deep.

However, every now and again, you come across a person who doesn't have the gunk and muck. They are such beautiful beings. Something feels different when you meet them. You feel seen. You feel heard. You feel understood. You feel connection in their presence.

They make you feel complete.

That’s Tico.

Anyway, here’s how we met.

So, I’m walking down the canned meats aisle and I pass Tico, who is holding the aforementioned can of tuna. He looks at my shopping cart, then turns to me and says, “Now you must be a healthy guy! I can always tell by what’s in people’s shopping carts how healthy they are.”

I look at my shopping cart. I do come across as quite healthy as I had only stopped at the produce section before that aisle, so my cart just contained fruits and vegetables. I don’t mention this factoid to him and instead accept the compliment with grace, “Why thank you sir! Yes, I do try my best!”

Tico then laments, “you know, I am trying to do my best too. I stopped eating red meat recently. So I’m here looking at all this tuna. But they all have a lot of cholesterol. I’m trying to watch that as I get older!”

I see an opportunity to be helpful here. I ask, “do you eat egg whites? They are like pure protein with no cholesterol. And you know, you can mix in a bunch of greens and get all of your veggies for the day in one sitting!”

Tico seems impressed by this, so I keep going, lecturing him on my views on nutrition, exercise, sleep, and anything else on which I have an opinion… which is everything.

Tico listens in a manner that is so patient and active that I feel he is hanging on every word I speak. It’s rare to be heard like this. It is a gift.

I ask Tico about himself. He is a truck driver. He tries to eat healthy. He tries to exercise when he can, but it’s difficult because he has to sit so much. He shares some of his favorite stretches with me. They happen to be some of my favorite ones too.

I complain about being old. You know… funny small talk amongst middle-aged men. He asks me how old I am. I tell him I am 47. He tells me he is 54. I am dumbfounded. He doesn't look a day older than 40.

And then he says something that makes me realize I am talking to god.

He says, “You know what my secret is to staying young? I don’t associate with people that have negative energy. I just won’t allow it. If you bring that around me, I leave. Life is too short to be weighed down by that.”

There was no malice in his tone when he dropped this wisdom on me. Rather, he said it with such excitement. He was letting me in on the secret to life… one that was far more valuable than switching from eggs to egg whites.

And then we parted ways.

I’ve been thinking about this encounter with Tico a lot these past few days. I think it helps explain why I am so hopeful right now. The more I have opened myself up to experiencing the world (and its people) around me these past few months and years, the more I realize Ticos are all around us. They are hidden in plain sight. They work at your grocery store. They may be your nurse. They could be taking care of your parents. Or maybe they are building a new house down the street.

This is the real America I have started to experience. We are all Ticos to some degree or another. We have real lives. Real struggles. Real pain. Real suffering. Real connection. Real community.

It’s messy and beautiful and wonderful, especially so, when we support each other along the journey.

The irony is that we can experience this true human connection and its resulting joy, and then moments later turn to our devices to see the misery and hatred that humans are raining down on each other, and fall into despair. Then to get out of this despair, rather than turning back to real human connection, we try to find salve deeper in the virtual world. The logic is absurd, yet it’s exactly what we are wired to do. I don’t know much about how our brains evolved so I don’t understand why this is the case, but look around the next time you are in a waiting room somewhere or standing in line and count the number of people NOT on their phones. It’s just true. We are addicted.

Unfortunately god doesn't live in your device. This is the realm of the hungry ghost.

What’s a hungry ghost? It’s a being that has a tiny mouth, tiny neck, and huge stomach. It is always hungry but it can’t fit enough food into its tiny mouth to ever satisfy its hunger. So it eats and eats and eats.

You can give a hungry ghost $100 billion and it will ask for another $100 billion (and then another).

You can give a hungry ghost the most powerful position in the world and it will use it to take over other countries and steal from the people who elected it.

The truth is that somehow, someway, hungry ghosts run planet Earth right now. And even though the Tico inside of us knows they are unhappy and evil, our inner hungry ghosts pine for some of their money, power, celebrity, and influence. If only we had those gifts, we would do it differently, right?

And so we let this toxic dynamic persist, in hopes that we will one day be able to partake in the hedonistic American dream. Over time, we have turned our hungry ghost rulers into demigods. They are above the law. They create and/or manipulate whatever rules they want to keep feeding themselves, wasting precious resources and leaving less for the rest of us and our future generations. They break our trust time and again, lie to us about it, and get back to their feasting. Hunger, poverty, homelessness, and inequality compound. But we have no time to do anything about this because our lives are so busy trying to catch up to “enough,” while “enough” keeps moving father and farther away from us.

This must come to an end. Connect with your inner Tico and you know this to be true.

But your hungry ghost is scared. I get it. Mine is too. What will I do with less money and wealth? How will I live? What about the convenience of modern American life? How will I cope when it ceases to exist?

But guess what? I have a home, work, a car, my health, and some savings in the bank. I very objectively have “enough.”

So what are we worried about? The rule of hungry ghosts may finally be coming to an end! Yes, the transition will be painful. But we can transition. Life can be simpler. Life can be more connected. We don’t need the frills and the convenience and the bling. We just need genuine connection with each other. Authentic connection will help nourish our inner Ticos, and over time, shed the gunk and muck that America has buried us under to feed its aristocrat hungry ghosts.

…

Tico, I am so grateful to have met you. I hope we meet again on our journey through life.