A Tale of Two Wallets

There's a Trader Joe's about a block from my office, where I often go after work to buy groceries for dinner. About six months ago, I was there on such a shopping excursion. I was in line, waiting as the cashier scanned all my items and asked for me to swipe my credit card. I reached into my brown messenger bag in search of my wallet. I felt a book, my cell phone, and various flavors of lip gloss, but no wallet. Panic set in. Where could it be? Suddenly I imagined someone sneaking into my office, stealing the wallet, and traveling halfway around the world, charging everything to my plastic. The cashier asked again for my card. "I don't have it," I said. "That's OK. No big deal" she said, taking the brown paper bag filled with the night's dinner contents away from me. "It's not OK," I said, either out loud or to myself, to this day I can't remember. "My wallet's gone. Someone's over in Europe spending my hard-earned cash." (OK, the second part I definitely didn't say out loud). After she took the bag of groceries, I sprinted back to the office, where sure enough I spotted my wallet, completely in tact and locked away in a desk drawer. By that point, I decided to avoid a second Trader Joe's trip and so we scavaged for dinner. Fast forward to yesterday. I'm back in line at Trader Joe's, about to pay when my wallet again cannot be found. I pause for a second, remembering that I had opened by wallet for change to buy an afternoon candy bar and had again, locked it up in the desk drawer, rather than put it back in my purse. I asked the cashier to hold my food--which they can do, FYI--and ran back to the office. Sure enough, it was safe and sound in my office. I returned to the store, paid for and collected my groceries, and had a nice dinner. Aha, the wonders of mindfulness. Maybe these two stories have nothing to do with weddings, but as the rabbi told us in our second meeting with him last week, use proven solutions or strategies for new problems. A pause, a deep breath, a moment of calm, could make a world of difference.