The other day, I went to my local supermarket chain in Berlin to buy a jar of pomegranate seeds. I was on a mission to make a warm cauliflower and chickpea salad and the pomegranates seemed like an essential component.

I scanned the shelves but couldn’t find any. I was about to head home disappointed but thought: well, what’s the harm in asking?

“A jar of what?” the man asked. He was tearing off the cellophane from a huge packaging cart of yoghurts. “Pomegranates? I didn’t even know they came in jars!”

He was small and wiry, with twinkly eyes. I`d have put him past retirment age.

“Oh, well thanks anyway,” I said brightly, turning to go.

But he wasn’t finished.

“You know,” he said. “I used to work in 𝑅𝑒𝑤𝑒 [another supermarket chain] at Alexanderplatz right after the 𝑊𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑒 [the German term for reunification]. One day, someone came in looking for still water! Can you imagine?”

At this point, I need to translate something.

In German, 𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑙𝑙 means silent. You know as in 𝑆𝑡𝑖𝑙𝑙𝑒 𝑁𝑎𝑐ℎ𝑡 (Silent Night)

But it`s also used to describe non-sparkling water: 𝑆𝑡𝑖𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑠 𝑊𝑎𝑠𝑠𝑒𝑟.

“And do you know what I said to them?” he said. “I said to them: well to be honest, I`m not in the habit of conversing with water!”

He´d abandoned his packaging cart to tell me this story. He went on to describe how confusing it was suddenly to be bombarded with so many new products from the West. He kept mixing up bottles of wine with bottles of vinegar. It was a lot to deal with.

Why am I sharing this story? Couple of reasons.

For one, it made me reflect on Germany`s reunification history. About the stories that never get told. The people who`ve worked stacking supermarket shelves all their lives, first in the Communist East, where they could name all the products, and then in the West, where they were suddenly confronted with worldier customers demanding bottles of 𝑆𝑡𝑖𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑠 𝑊𝑎𝑠𝑠𝑒𝑟. Against the backdrop of so much jubilation, it must have been a difficult psychological shift.

It also made me reflect on how much our shopping baskets reveal about who we are. I live in a world of roasted cauliflower and pomegranate seeds. He most definitely does not. If I hadn`t approached him, our two worlds would never have collided.

As a journalist, it also reminded me of what sometimes happens at the end of an interview. You think you`ve asked all the important questions, your guard is down, you`re winding things up, and suddenly you find yourself in a conversation of far greater candour and depth, making the rest of the conversation feel almost irrelevant.

I call this the “pomegranate effect:” the meaningful connections that arise when we seek greater depth not in order to fulfil an agenda but to satisfy genuine curiosity.

Our everyday lives are full of them and as a business journalist, I think our coverage of the economy could do well to include more of them. What are some of your pomegranate moments?