Maybe I need a new mantra. Something less guilt inducing—like Om, perhaps. "Everything Counts" is not working for me, at least not at the present moment.
Yet "Everything Counts" is the pop-up message of my existence, ever since I heard my un-official spiritual adviser, Carolyn Myss, say those words on the Oprah show. She said the little things count as much as the big things, for good or evil.
I've read a couple of Myss' books. She's a smart woman. I think Oprah was even a little scared of her. So, I'm thinking—what if she's right?
This is to explain why I did what I did when what happened happened. 'Cause I know a lot of people will be wondering.
Last summer, I found a $5 bill on the ground outside the post office at Flamingo and Jones. For a moment, I was happy. Then I started thinking there was a good chance the person who dropped it might come looking for it. So I took it inside and knocked on the Dutch door that leads to who-knows-where, looking for a lost and found.
Neither of the guys I spoke to had any idea what to do with the cash, and I didn't want to just hand it over. At an impasse, they finally advised me to keep it.
Not a life-changing amount of money, but five bucks is still enough to spoil your day if you're the one to lose it. The more I thought about the money, the more I couldn't wait to get rid of it. So when I saw a homeless man outside the Vons on Rainbow, I gave it to him, and sent a spiritual message to its rightful owner via the universe that the money was not lost in vain. Even if the homeless man converted it to alcohol, I had tried.
The money I found at the Orleans a few months later didn't leave me feeling so sure of myself.
After seeing a movie, on my way to my car, I looked down at an empty row of slots and saw what looked like paper money in the basket of a slot machine. I got closer and saw that it was a $1 bill. When I touched it, I realized there was more underneath—a 10. I looked all around and saw nobody. That meant nobody saw me, except maybe the eye in the sky.
Some background: When my mother retired, she moved to Lake Tahoe and began visiting the casinos to play bingo and pass the time. I don't think she'd been there a month when she found $500 on the floor at Harvey's. She took it to the lost and found and was told that if nobody claimed it within a certain number of days, it would be hers. Well, nobody claimed it, and she got to keep it.
When I found $11 at the Orleans, I walked to the house phone and asked for the lost and found. A surprised-sounding man told me he'd have a change person meet me and take the money.
Soon, a change lady approached. I showed her where the money was left; she wrote it down. I waited for her to say the same kind of thing my mother had been told, but she didn't. In fact, she did not look amused.
I asked what would happen to the money in the likely event that no one claimed it. She replied that it would go to the casino. "It's not worth losing my job over," she said, not very convincingly.
Lose her job? Really? That's different than the policy at Caesars Tahoe, where I worked as a change person for a few months more than 20 years ago. Back then, whatever money we found in the slots was ours to keep, a nice little fringe benefit.
To this day it's hard for me to keep my head up when passing slots. You'd be surprised how many people leave money behind.
So I don't know why I felt I had to turn the money in. All I know is it just didn't feel right in my hands. And I don't know what the change lady did with the money. But by the time I walked out of there, I felt kind of foolish. I had to tell myself it was good karma for me, at least.
Maybe. Within weeks, my car was stolen. It would be recovered in a couple of days, trashed, and it would cost me $220 to replace the ignition and a couple of hundred more in lost items that I'd unwisely kept in the trunk, none of which was covered by my insurance deductible. I was left standing in my empty parking space wondering what happened to my karma.
Do I hear snickering? That's OK, I probably deserve it. The thing is, I know if I find money again, I'll do no differently. I know I was chumped, but I'm still hopeful.
Myss, in Sacred Contracts, wrote, "According to the laws of karma, just as your actions in this life plant seeds that ripen and bear fruit in future lives, so your current lifetime reflects your past deeds … (O)ur rewards and punishments and the rate at which we evolve spiritually are all based entirely on our own efforts."
Obviously, I have more work to do, settling scores with the universe.