Virtue is its Own Reward

Quick story - we were walking home from school yesterday and in front of the school we found an earring. It had dangling mother-of-pearl circles and it was obvious it was an earring someone would miss. My daughter was thrilled at finding it, but I explained to her that it looked special and that someone was probably looking for it. She could see my point and was a little disappointed, but agreed that someone must really love the earring so we should go to the office and leave it with Lost & Found.

So she gave it to the school secretary, who congratulated her for being honest and turning it in. She told her it was great that she did the right thing, and filled out a "wonderful ticket" - put her name in a jar for a drawing at the end of the week.

Typically, my daughter didn't say a word through all of this, just looked wide-eyed. Then we left and started walking home again. Before we'd left the block, she found a broken rubber band on the sidewalk and said, "Mom, it looks like somebody lost their treasure! We better go turn it in." On the way home we found lots of this type of "treasure" - a candy wrapper, a flower petal... By the time we got home my pockets were crackling with treasure. Those ten blocks between school and home got a nice cleanup!

I titled this anecdote "Virtue is its Own Reward," which seems odd if you consider that Wini was actually rewarded with a Wonderful Ticket. But I didn't mean her, I meant me. It's not like I went through some moral quandry about returning the earring, but I certainly reaped the reward of seeing Wini experience that feeling of having done a good deed.