The Pleasure of Virtue

The Random Gift

I spend the summer in Sag Harbor, in our family home. If you turn left and walk along the beach, in a few hundred feet you’ll be at Haven’s Beach. Turn left again, and across the parking lot is an idyllic dog park: four or five acres, unfenced, where dogs frolic and catch balls and humans gather in groups to discuss local events. I go there daily with Theo to enhance his (and my) social life.

It was quiet last Saturday at 5:30: just one dog, who soon left. Theo trotted to the middle of the field and squatted. He was well ahead of me: I spotted carefully (behind the dark green patch, to the left of the rock), walked purposefully, and gathered it up in a poop bag, its fecal warmth passing through the bag to my hand. I could have left it there, where it would have only enhanced the vegetation in the long run, but in the short run, someone might have stepped in it, and I try to be a good neighbor. I tied a knot around the bag and put it in the waste container.

We didn’t stay long after that and we left along the same path on which we’d arrived.

Only something was different now. On the last patch of seagrass on the left by the short path to the sea, someone had dropped a couple of dollar bills, or so I first thought. Then I picked up the bills and took a closer look. They were a couple of hundred-dollar bills!

I must confess I laughed out loud. What a fabulous surprise! What a fine gift! I looked around. Nobody was in or near the parking lot.  A few people were sitting on the beach far away.

The summer crowd is affluent. Perhaps the person who mislaid the bills wouldn’t even notice the loss.

When I got home, I told my husband. “Look what I found on the beach! Let’s eat out!”

“OK. Are you sure? But what about the spaghetti?”

“We’ll have it tomorrow! We have to celebrate this gift from the universe!”

He didn’t take much persuading. We ate recklessly (cocktails, wine, soup, entrees, dessert) at the best place in town. Fine food provides intense, momentary pleasure. We were very pleased with ourselves—though when it came time to pay, we had to supplement our gift from the universe.

The guilt set in the next day. What if the money was somebody’s pay? What if he or she worked all day so we could dine luxuriously, excessively?

I had my cake. Now it was making me sick. I felt ashamed.

I called the police station in case someone had reported lost cash. Nobody had. I told the officer to call me if such a call came in, and if the person was missing the two bills I’d plucked from the sand, I’d return them—happily!

Days went by, and no one reported the loss.

I still didn’t feel good about the incident. I just kept feeling I should somehow pay it forward. I had enjoyed the meal, but it surely was indulgent. I should have done something better with the money.

Then I realized it was not too late. I didn’t have to be literal with regard to the two actual bills I handed the waiter. I could still spend that amount on something more valuable than a restaurant meal.

I made a $200 donation to the Brigid Alliance, which supports poor women traveling to states where they can get abortions.

Ever since I clicked that “DONATE” box, I’ve have had a warm feeling about that last patch of grass by the dog park. In a way, the two hundred dollars I found occasioned both the merry meal out and the donation. Often virtue really is its own reward, providing satisfaction—and even pleasure—when we feel we’ve done right.

Isn’t that the basis of a civil society?