So I will be honest, this week has been pretty chaotic. There is a lot going on and I have been an emotional wreck. However, amid all of the chaos that life has been throwing at me lately, there are a few things that have happened throughout the week that I am trying to focus on in an attempt to realign my attention on positive situations that outweigh the negative and ultimately change my attitude as a result. 

A few days ago my Nan was at a bus stop in Parramatta when she found a mobile phone sitting on the bench next to her. Instead of just handing it into the information or security desk, she decided to take it home and then ring up my sister and I. She told us that the screen was black, so we told her to press the circular button down the bottom. Please, take a guess as to just how well that went. Yeah, terribly. We gave her instructions to see whether the phone was turned on and unlocked, but note to self: teaching your eighty-one year old grandmother the basics of an iPhone over the phone is as difficult as getting out of a pair of jeans that are two sizes too small…while the zipper is still up…and you are wearing a belt – ya feel me?

Instead, we decided to do ourselves a favour and drive over to my Nan’s house the next day, check the phone and see if we could locate the owner. The entire time, we were joking about whether we would get some money as a reward if we could pull it off – however, I use the term ‘joking’ loosely, because deep down I think we both were somewhat serious.

We used our detective skills to discover that it was a teenage soccer player who had flown all the way from New Zealand with his football team and accidentally left his phone at the bus stop. We tried ringing his contacts labelled ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad’, but every contact was an overseas number and we were unable to reach them. At this point, my Nan just said, “Why don’t you wipe everything off the phone and just use it for yourselves. You won’t find him and it’s his fault for losing it”. Aimee and I just laughed. Challenge accepted.

In the end, we successfully found his girlfriend on Facebook and messaged her from my account letting her know what had happened. It was this part that was the most rewarding, because I was able to start a friendship with someone in a completely different country – yay friends! We spoke for a bit, helping each other out in the endeavour to get her boyfriend’s phone back to him as soon as possible. We contacted the manager of his football club and were able to drop his phone off at the Leagues Club he was playing at. The manager asked us if we would like anything in return, like a football jersey, but Dad just responded with “No mate, thanks all the same, but we just wanted to pay it forward.”

I was at work at the time, but when Dad told me what he had said, I was left a little disappointed at the fact we could have scored a free Parra jersey, but moreso, it taught me a lesson. We should do good things just for the heck of it. Not for what we might get out of it, the potential reward or our own benefit. I guess it all comes down to intention. And let’s be real, at the start, my intention wasn’t great – but hey, neither was my Nan’s to be perfectly honest. That said, I’m so grateful that we didn’t give up on finding the owner. It’s not only so rewarding just finding the person and being able to return the lost phone, but being able to use the experience to get to know someone in another country and make a friend, no monetary reward could beat that – that was priceless.