This is a true story.
Sometime in June of 2005, my colleague Dinesh Gopalakrishnan and I traveled to L.A. to attend the E3 (games) Expo. Within L.A, we traveled by bus (bad idea).
Once in the evening, while were in the bus, an elderly, tall, well dressed African American gentleman came up and asked me, “Did you find a wallet on your seat?”
I politely said, “No Sir.”
He then asked Dinesh and almost every other person on the bus the same question. No one had found his wallet. I felt bad for the man.
Just as the next bus stop was arriving, he spoke loudly and said, “I lost my wallet. It had a million dollars inside.”
That’s when it dawned on me that the man was not mentally stable. After the man got off, the bus driver sneered and told everyone, “He’s been looking for his million dollar wallet for many many years.”
Since then, I have related this story to many people, describing how scary and crazy public travel in LA can be.
This morning, for some reason, I remembered that man. I felt strongly that lots of us, including me, resemble that man. We keep looking for our million dollar wallets – be it fame or fortune and keep asking people to help us find it. We repeat this exercise very day. And soon we forget that we never owned the wallet, and hence may never find it…
Dedicated to Sri Sri and Babaji.