By: Rob Brayl
For BiggerThanBeyonce.Com

About a week ago, I mingled my way into McDonalds. I generally do not eat much fast food but I was starving and it was convenient. I decided to splurge and to splurge big. So I ordered a Big Mac.

After squirting ketchup into papercups, I went to sit down noticing an elderly woman sitting alone eating an ice cream cone. Something told me to say hello, so I did. And what happened beyond that first introduction was, well, awesome.

Denise (think Jessica Tandy but French) was 76 years old and bubbling over with life. In a thick foreign accent, wearing pearl earrings & a knit beret, she spoke with her teeth showing, the smile accentuating her wrinkle filled face as I sat mesmerized. Filled with contentment and a zest that I felt I was missing in that moment, I wondered what she possessed, wondered if I possessed the same thing, if it somehow swam inside me the way it swam inside her.

Denise was born in Paris (her family still resides there) but has lived in New York City for 30 years. She told me that New York was the “greatest city on earth”. She told me that I needed to learn to cook, that what I was eating was unhealthy and that I needed to start watching these things while young. She asked me if I exercised. She asked what gave me a spark, what it is I loved to do. She called the French snobs. She mentioned how she bikes all day, every day (except for at nights because her vision isn’t what it used to be). She laughed out loud & I, I fell in love.

And in what seemed like a split second our half hour long conversation had come to an end. She wished me luck in finding what it was I was searching for with a kaleidoscopic glow and as she walked away, I realized what she had, was what I’ve always been searching for — FEARLESSNESS.

Heartbreak had left me tangled in fear, rattled my spurs. Filled with jaded doubts I had accepted the disconnection I felt in trusting another human being with my heart. But through the eyes of a 76-year-old firecracker, I realized that I am ready again. I’m ready to jump.

Check out FOREVER & ALWAYS (the new piano rendition) from Taylor Swift’s Fearless re-release above. See how it ties together? Get it?! Get it?! Sweet.

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