Computer Karma

On the morning of September 12th, 2006 I was downtown Victoria, meeting with a small team of people from the City of Victoria to prepare for a strategy session, to be held the next day, on the issue of homelessness in Victoria. As I was to be downtown most of the day, I had my computer with me so I could check email and do some work between meetings.

After my get-together with city officials, I walked through Fan Tan Ally to Victoria’s tiny, but historic Chinatown to meet a photographer from Focus Magazine. Earlier in the summer I had given an interview to Focus writer Sara Cassidy on Carry Tiger to Mountain: the Tao of Activism and Leadership, and as it was to be published in the October issue, they wanted a photo of my happy smiling face.

Now, I’m torn on this matter: I’ll admit that my ego enjoys the massage it gets when someone wants to take my picture and plaster it in a magazine. But part of me would really rather have a photo of nature – waves on a beach, or the curl of a rapid on a river – accompany stories about Carry Tiger to Mountain. Well, ego won out and I agreed to the photo-shoot.

The photographer sat me on a bench at the mouth of Fan Tan Ally and I put my computer bag down at my feet. For some reason I thought it important that it not be in the frame, and he assured me it wouldn’t. I had actually placed it some distance away at first, and decided that it had better be close at hand for safety’s sake. He clicked away, I managed a grin, and all seemed to be going well until I checked on my bag a few minutes later. Gone.

I lept to my feet and scanned the busy sidewalk along Fisgaurd Street. People coming and going, but none of them toting my black shoulder bag. The photographer and I split up – I strode towards Government Street, and he hurried off – cradling all his gear – towards Store Street. As I walked, I called the police to make my unfortunate report – that not only had my computer been swiped, but so had my palm pilot and wallet. In addition, all my files on Victoria’s homelessness challenges were in my bag. Good grief.

After talking with the constabulatory, I made a more thorough search of the alleys and doorways in Chinatown – picking through a few trash containers and recycling bins - and that’s when I found my bag. It was just sitting in a doorway a few hundred meters from where it had been stolen. I braced a couple of dudes eating pizza outside a shop, questioning them if they had seen who had dropped it. They described a generically scruffy 20-something man. Not much help. The computer and palm pilot were gone, but my wallet was there, complete with over burdened credit card.

Now it was time for reflection. My first thought was awe. That some light-fingered thief had managed to stroll past and lift my bag – which was sitting less than a foot from my foot – without being noticed by myself, or the photographer, was amazing. My next impulse was to curse my ego for desiring to have my dour mug in the magazine, which lead me to the situation in the first place. And finally, and blessedly quickly, I turned towards solutions. All the data on my computer and palm pilot is backed up both on an external hard drive, and through a nifty online service called Data Deposit Box. But of course, we all know that to configure a computer to your liking takes weeks and months, and the joy of setting up Window’s again was now looming on the horizon. And while I learned that my household insurance would cover the replacement of the machine, there was a $500 deductible to be considered.

I went shopping, and decided on a new HP lap top to replace my bulky Acer, but resolved to sleep on the decision.

The next morning I bussed it back downtown to work with my colleague James Pratt to facilitate a strategy session on communications and Community Based Social Marketing for the Victoria Steering Committee on Homelessness. As I usually am before such a session, I was focused on the day’s agenda, so when a couple of gents I’d never seen before joined me in the elevator on the way up to the meeting room that morning, I didn’t pay them much attention. Even when they followed me into the meeting room itself I didn’t really notice them much.

But when one of them took my computer out of a shopping bag, I snapped to attention.

“That’s my computer,” I managed.

“We found this in some bushes,” he explained. “We took it to Reverend Al and he knew how to find out who owned it.”

The two men, who introduced themselves as being homeless, explained that the night before they saw someone throw my palm pilot – an aging Kyocera that looks like its been through a combat mission in Afghanistan - into the shrubs. When they investigated, they found it along side of my computer there. They took it to Reverend Al, who runs Our Place, a local service centre for the homeless in Victoria – and he flipped open the palm pilot. The reminder that flashed was for the Steering Committee meeting on homelessness that I was about to participate in, complete with address and room number. He sent his two friends down to deliver my goods back to me.

I asked for and received the two men’s names and offered handshakes of thanks. I dug some money out of my pocket and gave it to them. And they departed, accepting my heart felt appreciation.

The computer was entirely intact. Not a scratch. Nor was the battered palm pilot any worse for ware. Even the power converter was accounted for. As someone recently commented, “you got to learn all the lessons, and got your stuff back anyway.”

Good karma? I like to think so. For most of my life I’ve been working hard to make the world a better place. I’m not always successful. I’ve made a lot of mistakes. Of late, I’ve been going through some profound, and very difficult, personal transformation that hasn’t been easy, on me, my family, friends and loved-ones. There too I’ve made some mistakes in my pursuit of truth and peace. I’ve hurt people. But I’ve been trying. And the harmony of the universe seems to return for that effort some semblance of justice.

I had been prepared to find the goodness in the situation even if my computer had never been recovered. That I didn’t have to didn’t stop me from learning the lessons of ego and attachment yet again.