Early this month I shared a few posts about “doing the right thing whether or not someone is looking.” (See 4/1/21 & 4/2/21.). Recall, that we all have an internal, moral compass. We don’t always turn down the volume of our lives, so we hear it. But it is always there.
What I didn’t mention and will share here, is that there are endless other “benefits” to having high moral character and integrity beyond being at Peace with ourselves (which is still #1 for me.). One of those is building good Karma! Per Wikipedia, Karma is “the spiritual principle of cause and effect, often descriptively called the principle of karma, wherein intent and actions of an individual (cause) influence the future of that individual (effect).
Basically, it means do the right thing and build “good Karma” vs. do the thing you know is not right and you build “bad Karma.”
I was at the food store a few days ago picking up just a handful of items. I had a “mini” cart and also my “mini” purse over my shoulder. It was super busy and I knew I needed to “travel light” to maneuver among the swarm of shoppers moving in every direction.
I filled my cart with the dozen or so things on my list and headed for self checkout. As I scanned my items (salad ingredients for dinner that night, fresh lilies for my table and some low carb Atkins Carmel something or other for my sweet tooth) my basket was near empty.
Over the sound system I noticed someone was being paged to Customer Service. Within seconds I heard my own name clear as day, they said it twice. Since I was done scanning items, I reached for my purse to quickly pay so I could go to customer services and see what the page was about. Oops. I realized I did not HAVE my “mini” purse. It was not in the cart, not over my shoulder. Nor were my house and car keys on a link attached to the purse itself. Yikes.
You might be thinking how stressful the ensuing few moments were, between discovering my purse and keys were gone, and retrieving them from Customer Service. Especially since (although I don’t normally carry cash) there were several hundred dollar bills in there as I was paying for something the next day. You might expect my heart started racing, my respiratory rate jumped and my blood pressure spiked.
But that’s not what happened. In fact, just as quickly as I put two and two together, and realized someone brought my “lost” purse/keys to customer service, I already knew that nothing would be missing. And if it was, someone needed whatever it was, more than I did.
I strolled up to the desk and asked for the purse confidently, as if they had announced the reason for the page over the loud system. “Thank you so much” I said as two women with store name tags handed it to me. One said, “The customer who returned said she took nothing, but it was open and she zipped it up.”
Sure enough it was zipped. Keys were intact. I returned to the self check out kiosk and swiped my credit card. I didn’t take an inventory of the contents then, having already made peace with whatever might be. (Refresher: Don’t argue with reality – Byron Katie.)
Later that afternoon I opened my small purse and confirmed: Two credit cards, my drivers license and health insurance cards, plus several hundred dollars in cash, all intact. “Thank You!” I exclaimed out loud. Not surprised, but sincerely grateful. While I was Peaceful with whatever I might have found (or not found), it would not have been fun trying to sort though restoring my purse contents had there been anything missing.
Doing the right thing even when it is the hard thing, does not guarantee an easy life per se. We are not abdicated of tragedy, bad luck or challenges. It just means that we build a trust with the universe (more of a personal definition of “Karma” – not the Wikipedia one) that we will do our best, and expect others to do the same.
Don’t forget to turn the noise of life down and listen to your inner self. Then stock the Karma bank with good deeds and watch the same come back to you! I can’t even remember how many lost wallets and keys from anonymous strangers, I myself have returned to customer service over the years, but there have been a lot of them!