Life Lessons From A Missing Wallet

Losing the car keys can be frustrating for sure, but losing a wallet is some next level stress, right?! Cash, credit cards, driver’s license, business cards yet to be filed, pictures of loved ones…so many things stashed in between those folds and stuffed in those pockets. The initial moment of realizing that your wallet is not where it should be, or where you know you put it, can be panic inducing. Worst case scenarios plays through your mind and can cause physical reactions throughout your entire body. Heart palpitations, stress sweat, throbbing headache, nausea, and panic attacks are all ways in which our physical being react to the sudden and overwhelming amount of emotions that you are flooded with.

Having your wallet disappear triggers every fear you have regarding money and financial stability. It also triggers fears about identity theft that can feel like a terrible violation of your privacy. I know this from experience. Over the last 27 years I have had the displeasure of six stolen or lost wallets, the most recent being yesterday.

When I took a trip down memory lane and revisited those losses in my mind, I realized that in each loss there was a lesson, or a message, from The Universe attached to it. Each missing wallet was like being smacked in the face with my fears and hang-ups regarding money, or lack thereof. Each time this has happened I was presented with an opportunity to examine, and manage, my emotions while in the frenzy of the moment. I like to refer to these moments as the hidden gems inside the grenades; those jewels of clarity and wisdom that can be found after the chaos of exploding circumstances.

The first time I lost a wallet was when I was 20. I left it in the bathroom at work, where only employees were allowed, but a customer still managed to find a way to get in there. What that person did not know was that I had two wallets. One had ID and money (and would have had credit cards if I had qualified for any at the time), the other had personal information. They stole the second wallet. They didn’t get any money thankfully, since I was perpetually broke back then. What they got was a couple years worth of notes collected from friends and contact info of random, cool people that I met and wanted to stay in contact with.

Believe it or not, I considered that wallet the bigger loss than the one that had money and my ID.

All of those names, numbers, and addresses in my mind, equaled potential friends. Those friendships that might have been, now would never be.

Looking back, I have now realized that the lesson in that wallet was, “Stop waiting and wishing. Either do it now, or learn to let it go and not wallow in regret”. I was a collector of potential friends with zero follow through. I dreamed of having pen pals from all over and sending cards and letters to grace their mailbox with something other than bills. I had the opportunity and failed to launch. Dreams are great, but they are nothing without actions. This is a lesson I needed to learn for the future, when I would begin to build businesses. I had a dream back then, but was not actionable on it. That dream fizzled and went away due to lack of action. Lesson learned.

Fast forward roughly 12 years. Having learned the lesson from the first wallet, I am now an actionable dreamer. I build retail stores and plan epic summer long, cross country vacations. Both business building, and ten week long vacations, require copious amounts of planning in order to be successful. I no longer simply dream about being self-employed and unforgettable vacations, I make them happen.

Every summer, for several years at this point, I plan a cross country family road trip. I plan for months in advance. Routes, campgrounds, activities, and what we need to bring along all take several months of planning, and I look forward to it every year. But, no matter how meticulously you plan anything, there is always some X factor that will throw a monkey wrench into you plans. On this trip the X factor was being distracted by my husband and my daughter bickering while packing up that morning.

After settling the bickering (as step parents and step children are prone to doing) everyone was settled in the vehicle and ready to hit the road. A few hours later, my cell phone rang. It was an out of state number. Oddly enough, the same state we had just left. Assuming it was the place we had stayed at the night before, I answered. It was the State Police. The officer introduced himself and asked me if I knew where my wallet was. I replied, “Yes, its my purse, between my feet”. He suggested that I check. Thinking it odd, I did it anyways. As it turns out, my wallet was not in my purse, it was in his hands…one state line and 3 hours behind us.

I told him where we were and that we would turn around and come get it. Much to my surprise, he offered to drive it to the state line and meet us there. What a blessing! That would help us save almost 3 hours roundtrip on our way to the next place we were staying.

What had happened was that a motorist on the highway miraculously spotted my non-descript beige canvas wallet laying beside the road a mile or so from where we had been staying. In the chaos of the bickering I had set my wallet down on the bumper of our camper and it fell off once we reached maximum speed on the highway.

Pretty amazing, right?! It gets even better!

After a verbal inventory over the phone with the officer, it was confirmed that all of my credit cards and cash were still in the wallet. Crazy amazing! Especially when there was roughly $1200 in the wallet. It was my petty cash for the entire vacation, and we were only about 3 weeks in.

We met the officer at the state line, thanking him profusely. He was kind enough to have taken down the Good Samaritan’s name and address so that I could send them a thank you letter. That day my faith in random kindness and generosity was renewed. My daughter got to witness two different people do the “right” thing and work together to help make our vacation a wonderful experience. In a world that at times can feel very cold, greedy, and selfish she learned what I already knew (but needed to be reminded of); that good people do exist and anyone can be someone else’s guardian angel. What a beautiful lesson that turned out to be. And that bickering? It stopped, at least for the rest of the day #unexpectedblessing

A few year later found me expanding my retail business, and I now had two thriving and growing businesses. I had gone from no action in my 20’s to all action in my mid-30’s. I believe that the appropriate label would have Workaholic. I loved my work and found it exciting to be there everyday, looking for ways in which I could do better and better. Burnout was never something that I considered.

I mean, really, love what you do and you never work a day in your life, right? WRONG.

I woke up one random morning excited for the day, as usual. I had an afternoon appointment at my original store with a jewelry seller who had become a good friend. I looked forward to seeing him as much as I looked forward to digging through hundreds of bags full of jewelry looking for exactly what I needed and wanted to delight our customers. I sat up, launched myself out of bed, and right into a wall.

I was dizzy and disoriented. I sat back down. No dizziness. I felt just fine. I stood back up and teetered back and forth. Sitting was fine, standing not so much. What the heck? I felt like I was drunk, which was impossible since I couldn’t even remember the last time I had an alcoholic drink. This, as it turns out, would be first time with the Tilt-A-Whirl experience of Vertigo. If you’ve never had it, you don’t want it. It really is like being drunk without the enjoyment of any alcohol.

My husband drove me into work that day, stopping by Dunkin Donuts on the way to pick up a coffee for me & a dozen doughnuts for the staff. I stepped out of the vehicle with my wallet on top of the box of doughnuts. Precariously holding my coffee in one hand, box of doughnuts in the other, I weaved down the sidewalk and into my store. It wasn’t until several hours later that I realized that once again, this non-descript canvas wallet that I loved so much, was once again missing.

In my short jaunt from the car to the front door, I had apparently tipped a bit too much and my wallet slid off the box of doughnuts and onto the sidewalk. Being canvas, it didn’t make much noise when hitting the ground. With the sound of traffic and my intense amount of concentration to try to not walk like a drunken hobo, I never even noticed.

I know what you are thinking. Surely I had learned my lesson from before and was not carrying over $1000 in my wallet. That would be correct. This time it was closer to $800.

Believe it or not, I got that wallet back again.

I have always been kind to the homeless people in the area around my stores, letting them do odd jobs for money on a fairly regular basis. That kindness paid off when one of them went out looking for my wallet and asking around to see who may have picked it up. He returned a while later with my empty wallet. He had found it in one of the large planters put out by the City. Another homeless person had seen someone stash it there earlier. While I was annoyed at not having it returned in it’s original state, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of gratitude that this man who would have been considered a nuisance and a degenerate by most people took the time to try and help me.

For the record, his name was Steve. He had a dog named Buddy. He was homeless because though he did make some money and got a monthly welfare check, he couldn’t afford any place that allowed dogs and Buddy was his family. His only family. He considered living in a tent to be a small price to pay for the love and friendship that he had with Buddy.

Ironically enough, that SAME wallet was stolen out of my car a few weeks later. This time it only had about $700 in it, but Steve was unable to track it down this time. That non-descript beige canvas wallet, with the green recycle symbols all over it, that I loved so much was now gone for good.

You would think the lesson would have been: STOP CARRYING SO MUCH FREAKING CASH IN YOUR WALLET! And maybe it was!lol However, that was not my takeaway from those situations. My takeaway from that was that kindness extended is generally kindness returned. That investing in other people, and their story, reaps benefits more valuable than money. I may have lost $700 and had to explain to my credit card companies why they were replacing my card so soon after the last replacement, but I had a brush with unexpected generosity from the societally least of the least, a man with no roof over his head and no relatives to interact with.

I loathe to call Steve homeless because as he put it: As long as he had his tent to shelter him, Buddy to share it with, and people like my staff and I to talk to, he didn’t consider himself homeless or without family. He considered himself blessed. $1500 seems fairly trivial when you think about life like that. Lesson learned: Money damned sure isn’t everything and happiness can absolutely be attained without it.

2019 found me single and living my best life. I was not only actionable on my dreams, but I was working less and living more. I had set my workaholics ways aside and decided that after a lifetime of taking care of everyone else, it was time to live life on my terms. As I said earlier, each missing wallet provided valuable life lessons that have helped make me who I am. Included in that was ditching the belief that I needed a husband to help provide for me. Those two wallets containing money that I never got back helped me to let go of my belief that there is only so much money to go around, and that losing any of it would amount to financial ruin.

May 9th found me in Miami, FL. I had gone down to spend the night with a lover I had there, and to pick up a male friend who was flying into town for business the next day. Part of “living life on my own terms” included meeting new people and opening myself up to saying yes to as many opportunities to get out of my Comfort Zone as possible. Spending a few days sharing a hotel room with a guy I met the month before in an airport was most definitely something I would have said no to 12 months prior.

But, there I was in Miami, with a few hours to kill before his flight came in.

Miami is a place with an abundance of things to do, but of all the things I could do, going to a nude beach seemed like the one most outside of my pre-established lines of what I was most comfortable doing. Obviously, this is what I chose. Having no idea whether or not there are bathrooms at a nude beach since it was my #firsttime I decided to stop at a convenience store and use their bathroom. I bought a drink, asked for the bathroom key, did my business, and then headed for the beach. Being all up in my head and jittery about going to a nude beach AND putting myself in what could be a risky situation with a man in a hotel (being a woman comes with more concerns about safety regarding men than it should), I had absent mindedly left my wallet in the bathroom stall. Believe me, Miami is not a place you want to lose your wallet in.

I turned around and headed back to the convenience store, berating myself being so stupid. I am an experienced traveler. I have lost my wallet before. “I know better than this!” I thought to myself. I went in and asked for the bathroom key, explaining the situation. I unlocked the door and there was my wallet, right where I left it. Waves of relief flooded over me…until I opened my wallet. Yup, another $700-$800 in cash officially gone. All my play money for the 4 days I was going to be there gone. The worst part, I KNEW better than to be carrying that much money in my wallet.

I mean really, you would think the last two wallet stories would have drilled that into me.

I walked back inside, thanking the clerk as I handed him the bathroom key. He asked if I found my wallet. I relied, “Yes”, and held it up to show him. He smiled and commented that it was a miracle in that neighborhood that it was still there. I smiled and left, not mentioning that my wallet was considerably lighter now than it was 30 minutes ago.

I got in my car and began to drive back to where the nude beach was, not feeling much like going to the beach or expanding my Comfort Zone. That was when it hit me; its just money. I l may have lost my spending cash, but I still had my ID and credit cards. I wasn’t broke. Far from it, actually. I would not have to ask the guy flying in for money to be able to get back home. I could still have a good time in Miami. So what if I lost some money? What I had in front of me was a blank slate that I had control over what was written on it. Was I going to write a sob story of pity and loss on that slate, or a story of living my best life possible?

I stopped at the nude beach and had a surprisingly pleasant experience. No one stared at me as I stripped down, laid out my towel, and enjoyed the sun. The sun and the sound of the waves completely erased all of my anxiety that I had surrounding what I thought it would be like to go to a nude beach. It wasn’t uncomfortable at all.

In fact, it was downright liberating.

Afterwards I went to my car, changed in to my favorite skirt and top, picked up my new friend, and we spent a fun filled evening exploring the Wynwood Walls district. I didn’t need cash to enjoy my mini vacation. Turns out, all I really needed an attitude of adventure and being open to living in the moment.

Here was are in March 2022. The world has survived a global pandemic, and virtually every soul has been changed in some way by it. I no longer have my stores. I no longer have a regular size wallet, just a small credit card holder that pits easily in the pocket of anything that I wear. Well, I had a small credit card holder. I set it down (once again in a convenience store) and realized it was missing about 30 minutes later.

Sure, I had an initial moment of anxiety and anger.

Tap to pay cards have made it way too easy for someone to use a stolen credit cards these days. Not to mention that I loved that little card holder and the picture in it from a trip we took on my daughter’s 21st birthday. Both of those are irreplaceable. This time when my wallet went missing it took me 120 seconds or less to take a deep breath, accept the situation as it was, and decide that my energy would be better spent going home and canceling the few cards I had in there. And that was that. It was that easy. I canceled the cards and acknowledged that I was not paying attention to what I was doing at the store. I had not been in the moment, I had been in my head thinking about how tired I was and that I wasn’t feeling well. So I listened to my body, laid down for a nap, and took the next day off to rest and shake off feeling sick. Lesson learned: Be in the moment and listen to your body when it is trying to tell you something.

I no longer carry cash around with me everywhere I go, especially large amounts of it. I no longer have thousands of dollars of income every single week, and yet my relationship with money is healthier than it has ever been. I control my money, not the other way around. And that man I picked up at the airport and took a chance on him being a stand up guy? Let’s just say that as I am typing this I am waiting for him to get home from his walk to the supermarket.

If I had let my shame and embarrassment over losing all of my cash in Miami in May 2019 goad me into having my daughter send me money via Western Union to come straight home, I would not be where I am today; living happily in Denver with the love of my life.

Money isn’t everything, though society at large will try to convince you that it is. In every loss I found the best of humanity, my own humility and humbleness, all alongside the lessons I needed to lead me to current life. You can lose your wallet and/or large sums of money without losing your mind and somewhere in between you may just find the hidden gems that The Universe has waiting just for you.