Magnificent Outcome: It’s Just About… Life.

The taxi ride is a long one. All the way from the 9/11 Memorial in New York to a restaurant called Bar Americain at 152 West 52nd Street near mid-town Manhattan. I tell the cab driver where we need to go and mention the name of the restaurant, it seems he has not heard of it, but says he can drop us off at least close to that address.

As we start to move, I notice a new way to pay the cab fare, there’s a TV screen facing the back seat and instructions on downloading a new app so I can pay the fare with my phone.

I love to do this stuff – so I download the app, enter the code on the screen, specific to this taxi, into my phone, break out the credit card and enter all the information. It seems to take a long time, but like I said the cab ride is a long one. But by the time we reach our destination, the app is still not working, so I pull out the cash to pay the fare, I grab my credit card and my hat as my buddy and I slide out of the back seat to exit. My buddy says do you have everything? I say “yes” and we say goodbye to the cab driver and he pulls away.

Then I realize the back of my pants feels just a little bit lighter. Easy to understand why, my wallet is in the cab. The cab which is now heading uptown.

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For most of the month of January and wrapping up just the day before, I had been reading the book, The Magic, by Rhonda Byrne. The book, 28 chapters in all with 28 exercises, is all about gratitude. Gratitude, your focus and attention on it attracts more of the same, and makes magic. Not only should you focus on it, but also focus on a vision of it happening in advance and in your mind’s eye see the results of your gratitude… magnificent outcomes to any situation you encounter. I can honestly explain….give you example after example from the past four weeks of gratitude having a dramatic impact on my life and on the lives of those with whom I am coming in contact.
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“My wallet!” I shout. Too late. The cab and the driver are long gone. This is about to be a long night of phone calls to credit card companies to cancel cards, a trip to the DMV on Friday to get a new drivers license, a call to the insurance company for a new insurance card, a call to the bank to cancel my bank cards. Calls, decisions, action steps galore. But then I realize I have the taxi’s code in my phone. I look up the number and try to figure out a way to call the company that supports the pay-your-fare by phone app to see if they can identify the cab from the code and just maybe I can secure the driver’s phone number from them. That’s one idea. Just then my buddy spots another cab driver walking around, he asks him who we should call if we have a taxi problem. The other driver says in New York, you call 311. We are still walking around searching for our restaurant as I dial in to see if there is a way I can get help before I simply give up and start canceling cards.

All this time we are still trying to find the restaurant where we are supposed to meet another friend. It is bitter cold and getting colder and by now we have been walking around for quite some time as I try and figure out what to do. I make the call to 311 and we start jogging up the street, in search of our meeting place. Finally we spot the restaurant up the block. Someone answers the phone, but she says she can’t help me with lost and found in our cab. She says she will transfer me to someone who can assist. It’s not exactly what I want to hear as I jog toward the restaurant, trying to get out of the frigid air. But as the operator clicks me over to another line we finally reach the front door of Bar Amercain.

Just as a new voice on the phone says “hello”, my buddy and I reach the hostess stand inside the restaurant. Standing in front of the two hostesses is a man, he’s looks at me, then reaches out both hands, in them he is cradling an brown wallet, wide open with a bunch of cards inside. The man is holding the wallet gingerly as if it were a sacred scroll and he is smiling from ear to ear. It’s my cabbie! My heart leaps and as the voice on the other end of the phone says “hello” one more time, I suddenly hang up. MY WALLET!!!

This has to be a dream. How did he find us? When did he notice the wallet? How did he make it there so fast? Where did he park? I don’t know and I don’t care, all I can see is his smiling face… he is the savior of my week long trip to New York, which at that moment was only 8 hours old. Talk about a miracle. Talk about fate. The hostesses and my buddy can’t stop talking about it. How does something like this happen? I give our cabbie a hug as he heads outs the door and slip him a $20 for the favor.

As I fall asleep that night and think about the best thing that happened to me that day, it’s an easy one. Gratitude for a magnificent outcome.

The kind of stuff that makes you believe…in magic.

Until next time, thanks for taking the time.

Mark