The bag was nice, sure. But what she really gave me was something else entirely—a reminder that doing the right thing still mattered, even when no one was watching.
I carried that bag for years. Not every day. Mostly on special occasions. And every time I did, I thought about that woman. I wondered who she was. What made her trust a stranger like that.
Sometimes, when life got hard, when bills piled up or things didn’t go my way, I’d remember that note.
Money comes and goes. Integrity stays.
Eventually, I passed the bag on to someone else. Not because I didn’t value it—but because I’d learned the lesson it came to teach me.
And I left the note inside.
Because maybe, just maybe, the next person would need that reminder too.
