I've followed this concept for a long time, through writers like Charles Eisenstein, Daniel Suelo, and most recently, Robin Wall Kimmerer, whose book, The Serviceberry, is about reciprocity.

You can look at it from the point of view of nature, which is all about reciprocity--that's just the way nature works.

Now I admit that I do tend to get a little New Agey and spiritual sometimes when I think about it on a human level, so if that's going to turn you off, feel free stop reading now.

This is about how cool things are when reciprocity is at play.

My youngest and "poorest" son and DIL got on the plane yesterday to visit her parents in the PNW. Because they are very frugal, they did a 2-stopper--from BVT-ORD-SFO-their final destination in Oregon. Well, that opens up a lot of room for error. Their plane in SFO was delayed a couple of hours, it then took off, but shortly thereafter returned to the airport becaus the weather up north was too bad to land.

So they incurred a hotel expense. Their next plane doesn't leave until 6 so they are going into Downtown San Francisco to have lunch and sightsee a little. DH had offered DS $100 the day before yesterday, but DS declined it--said he was fine with money. But we figure this delay will cost them a few bucks, so we decided to Venmo them the money.

When I Venmo'd it to DS, I realized I had $200 in my Venmo account that I forgot about because my other DS had Venmo'd me $200, unsolicited, to cover some expenses of our Christmas holiday together. So I thought, cool! This gift doesn't even put a ding in our budget.

As I was pressing the "send" button on the Venmo, I simultaneously got a text ping from a man I interviewed a few weeks ago. He had requested a check instead of a gift card as payment for the interview, but then he started texting me that he hadn't received it because he had to move unexpectedly. He seemed like he really needed that money, so I called my market research partner and she said she would stop the check and re-issue another one to go to the new address.

This text was to thank me PROFUSELY--he had received the check and was so grateful. It was for $150.00. I had already figured that he probably got kicked out of his previous apartment. I had a feeling he really needed this $150. It made me feel so grateful in return, and touched for his outpouring of thanks.

The fact that these three things--the confluence at that moment of our sending our son money, our our other son sending us money, and this man being grateful for $150... just made me think how cool life can be. What goes around comes around.

Anyone else have any stories like that? About reciprocity and/or "karma"?