Now it’s time for a little story that I think will make two important points really clear regarding this Phenomena of Consequences that I was telling you about in my last post:

1-this “force” is nothing new, it’s always been the way life works and the way our lives work, and…

2-this principle has no regard for time—consequences, including the truth, always materialize, however long it might take.

So just for some historical perspective, and further evidence of what I’m telling you, let’s look at the Arabia, a steamboat that sunk more than 150 years ago.

The Missouri River was said to have been too thick to drink and too thin to plow, but it was a ready-made source of transportation to the Western frontier in the mid 1800’s.  About 200 supply boats sank along the River during that time, as did the Arabia when it hit a snag (a downed tree underwater) on the evening of September 5, 1856.

The only life lost in the sinking of the Arabia was that of a mule.  Local papers at the time carried the account of the last deckhand off the boat, who told reporters that as the vessel was going under, he untied the mule’s lead and tried to pull the beast off the sinking boat. 

The man told of the obstinate mule and how it pulled against him, refusing to budge an inch.  He struggled heroically to get the animal to safety, but as the boat went under, the man had to swim to shore and save himself—and the stubborn mule went down with the ship. 

In 1987 four ordinary guys with out-of-the-ordinary imaginations got the idea they’d like to do some research, try to locate one of these sunken riverboats they’d heard rumors of, and dig it up (the course of the River has changed over time, leaving most of the wrecks under ordinary appearing ground).

Of all the wrecks on record, they settled on the Arabia as the one that seemed most findable.  Through some old newspaper accounts, and quite a bit of luck, they settled on a farm field near the river in Platte County, Missouri, and using some high-tech detection equipment they scanned the field and sure enough… began getting signals that indicated something large underground.

During the Winter months of 1988, they began excavation.  It’s quite a detailed story, so I won’t go into all of it here, but let’s just say it was quite an odyssey.  The boat was found intact, 45 feet underground and a half mile from the current River’s edge.

They recovered boots, cigars, elegant intact dishware, even a jar of pickles that one of the guys opened and sampled on the spot… causing everybody on the crew to stop and watch to see if he fell over.  He didn’t—but nobody else asked for their own pickle, either.  Any sort of supply that might be needed on the Western Frontier was found on the boat, perfectly preserved over the century and a half since it went under.

So back to the mule and this unseen force of returning consequences I’ve been telling you about.  These self-appointed archaeologists found something else:  The remains of a mule, its head still in a bridle, the lead rope still tied to the boat!

Seems the ole boy who claimed such valiance in trying to save the mule was lying.  Who can say now what his real motivation was at the time, but it must have been one of these:

1-he didn’t want it known that he left a mule to drown with a sinking boat, or

2-he seized the opportunity to appear valiant in a moment of crisis.

In a future post I’ll talk about the two very powerful human motivators, Fear and Desire.  They’re at work in most every action that people take.  We tend to move away from what we don’t want (in the first point above it’s his shame over letting the mule go down) or we move toward something desirable (in the second point, getting credit for being heroic).

“What goes around, comes around” is a metaphor that represents the way life works, they way we as people work, really—if for no other reason than we’re subject to this reality and its effects.

Obviously, this little principle also applies to deceit.  In fact, any action—even thoughts, sometimes, if we dwell on them long enough—will have a return manifestation into the physical world.  

So it could be just as easily said that, “The truth always comes around.”  Even if it takes a while.

Have you noticed yet that what you do has a way of coming back around? 

Think OJ.

If you’re ever passing through Kansas City, Missouri, you might want to check out the Steamboat Arabia Museum and see the boat and its interesting contents.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 4th, 2009 at 6:28 pm and is filed under Boomerangs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.