The supermarket I usually go to is about ten minutes away from my home by foot. Every second day, I go grocery shopping and also consider it yet another chance to get out, have fresh air, and take a walk. I buy milk for my coffee and bread for my breakfast, which I tend to have around noon after having finished my daily meetings and finish off some work before taking a break.

Germany is known to have a good variety of bread selections — even the supermarket bakeries competently offer well-made bread. Though my favorites being Ciabattas and Baguettes does not mean I don’t like the Brötchens. I would also include a 10-pulped carton of eggs, a pack of chicken breast or beef, sometimes a can of Coke Zero, a pack of cherry tomatoes, few protein drinks, Greek yoghurt, and a sack of onions if I had run out of them in that week. I like the onions both fresh and cooked.

My grocery bag quickly become overfilled and heavy — I reckon it gets about ten kilograms with all that. After walking about two minutes out of the supermarket, the heavy bag gets even heavier the more I keep holding it in one hand, so I start rotating it with the other hand to let the former one get a rest and be ready in the next two minutes. I take that’s more fair than having one hand do all the work for the whole journey. Along the way, I recognize the buildings and streets — each one tells me how much nearer I get to my destination. The weight, though, prevents me from thinking about anything else than itself — accusing an inanimate object of being selfish and ignorant may seem laughable, but I thought of it.

It’s only when I reach the tree-decorated, long, straight pathway to home that I happen to cause little stones to fly and miraculously find their way into one of my shoes — weirdly enough, never both. I always found this happenstance to be superstitiously unusual. I continue to walk and rotate the heavy bag between my hands, promising myself not to make a stop as to get home as fast as possible and relieve my hands of the burden. The little, lousy stone and the heavy bag; they bring out an immense annoyance in me and occupy my complete attention to that fact like they are conscious beings with ill intents.

Then I start gathering back control of my mind and push back my mindless reflexes: I — who can buy a full bag of groceries with fresh food and every greedy desire catered to, with feet to stand on and walk with, with hands that can hold — am irritated by the opulence of life?

It was I who was ignorant. And thus, my shame, for a brief moment, became heavier than the bag of groceries.