We’ve all done it – misplaced or lost something practical or valuable and then we tear through our homes and cars and lives, looking for whatever it is we’ve lost. Losing a wallet, for instance, can make you feel like you’re losing your identity. Or, as the illustration shows, it can make you feel naked. Your ID, your credit cards, your personal information, as well as cash, is kept there. In fact, when we dream of such a loss, it usually symbolizes a concern about one’s identity.
Recently, while at a a local coffee shop, Trish was inside ordering and Rob sat outside with Noah, our golden retriever. His keys and wallet lay on the table in front of him. An odd thought occurred. What if I just walked off and left my wallet here. What a strange thing to ponder, he thought, as Trish came out and handed him his coffee and they headed to the car. Rob held the dog leash, the coffee cup, the car keys and his wallet. In the process of putting the dog into the car and juggling the contents of his hands, the wallet must’ve slipped out. It fell to the pavement and wasn’t noticed.
A couple of hours later, the search began. It didn’t take Rob long to concede that he didn’t misplace the wallet in the car or house. He’d lost it. He decided to wait before taking any action, just in case it turned up. But he also took out an old wallet, as a replacement. The next morning he called the two banks which held his debit card and credit card. Sure enough, someone had tried to use the cards. So he had an answer to the intuitive question he asked himself just a couple of minutes before he actually left the wallet – not on the table, but the pavement.
This experience reminded Rob of another lost wallet experience, an extraordinary one, that unfortunately was cut from the text of Seven Secrets to make room for other stories. It’s a good one.
This incident occurred about 12 years ago when we lived in another city about 15 south of our present home.
Rob lost his wallet, but didn’t get frantic about it. He was confident that the wallet somehow would return to him. He’d lost the wallet while windsurfing on a lake near the house and hoped it had fallen out before he went into the water. However, he couldn’t find it on the shore where he’d rigged his sail. He knew that if he’d accidentally taken it with him and lost it in the lake, chances of recovering it were slender, to say the least.
But Rob, in this instance, didn’t do any of the things people normally do when they lose wallets – no calls to credit card companies, no request for a duplicate driver’s license, no contact with his auto insurance company. For three or four days, he visualized the wallet returning to him, visualized it so intensely that he could feel its weight in his hand, in his back pocket. He believed the wallet had been found already.
That same week, a lawn man had stopped by our house, soliciting business. We already had someone doing the lawn, but Rob and the man chatted, then the guy left. A few days later, this same man was fishing with a net in the lake where Rob had been windsurfing and dredged up Rob’s wallet. He returned it, complete with all the cards and water-soaked cash, and said he was relieved that Rob was alive and not on the bottom of that lake.
So not only did the wallet return, as he’d visualized, but he’d met the man who found it a few days before it was discovered.