Photo: Contributed

Have you ever lost your wallet? Or your keys? When these small items going missing it can really disrupt your life and leave you cold. “Where did I leave it?”, “When did I have it last?” You are now trying to figure out a way to recover the lost items. Imagining that a kind person may have returned them to some place near where you may have lost them gives you a little relief. But then you recall that it is a cold world, where so many people operate from a set of selfish motives – you think that you will never see your wallet or keys again.

This exact scenario played itself out for my oldest daughter the other day. She was at the Orchard Park Shopping Centre when she lost her wallet. It had some money and pictures of friends and a gift card with nearly $100 on it inside: a big loss to her. She had searched as best she could to find it to no avail. We played out the scenarios and considered that a good Samaritan may have picked it up. All the while we both were thinking that this was really quite unlikely. But we hoped a prayed and followed up the next day.

Nothing was turned in at the lost and found at the mall. We set our mind on how to get a new bank card etc. Then, later that day, a call from the TD Bank with some good news. Someone had brought her wallet to the TD Bank as that is where her bank account is and her bank card was in the wallet. The person who found it must have noticed that and took her wallet to the bank and they then looked up her name and address and called our home number. Indeed a good Samaritan had found it.

After some time of simply being thankful, I thought about the unique and special event it is that a person had such care for another unknown person to go to all that trouble.

A few years ago I was in a series of business seminars in which the leader brought us through an exercise in organizational development for the business I was involved in. One of the key ideas was that we sit down privately and consider our own set of values. The idea was that once we had set clearly what our values were that we now had a guide to the rest of the work we were to do. The simple idea of “Start with your values” led me to see this as a very useful way to resolve all kinds of issues in business and life.

If I start with my well considered values, and apply them to problems, I should get results that align with my true sense of purpose and good results ought to be the outcome for me and others. While life and business have many unexpected events, this simple idea has been of immeasurable value to me over the years. It is also clear to me that when others practice this approach as well, that in the case of my daughter’s wallet being recovered, other people will benefit as well. Thank you unknown good Samaritan!