Short Story: A dream reveals something to John about trust, and real integrity

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John's dream showed him how trust is sometimes removed from someone, by a simple act of thoughtlessness. John was dreaming that he went for a walk outside, at lunchtime, from his office job, in some big city. He went into a large new bookshop, and he was perusing the books, in there. John was rather surprised to find a secondhand book there too, amongst the new books. It was an old hard-covered green cloth book, good quality, with quality thick paper too. It was marked down from $25 to $21. John asked the man about it, as he had thought that he only sold new books there. The owner of the shop told John that from time to time some old guy comes in, and sells some old collectable books to him, which he then prices up, and resells. This particular book was produced in limited numbers, being of a chess tournament, held in Ballarat, (Australia) just after the reigning Chess World Champion, of that time, Alexander Alekhine, had died. Alekhine had died in March, 1946, and this tournament was held only 6 months later, in September, 1946. It was held as a memorial tournament for Alekhine, and players from all over the world had been invited, and competed in it. There was a nice photo of Alexander Alekhine in it too. John said to the man that if he gives him a straight $20 cash, can he have the book, at that price. The owner of the shop said, "Yes," so then, John was looking in his wallet, for a $20 note. John pulled all of the notes up halfway out to better see them, but then the guy, who was pacing impatiently backwards and forwards, reached over, and pulled out a $20 himself, saying, "Here's a $20." He actually pulled out two $20 notes, stuck together, and noticing this, he gave one back to John then. Then, he gave John an extra $2 coin in change too. John said to him, "Wasn't the amount exactly $20, why the extra change now?" He said, "Yes, my mistake," and he then quickly pocketed back the extra $2 again. Then, he winked at John, and said again to him. "Sorry, that was my mistake. I was getting distracted by that old man sitting over there. He is the man that I told you about, and he has brought in some more of his books to sell to me right now too." John then left the shop, feeling rather annoyed by the owner's reaching into his wallet like that, and he felt that he had lost faith in the man's integrity then too. This dream shows us how one careless act can lose someone's trust in us, and make them think ill of us. We need to watch ourselves, when we are distracted, and impatiently waiting for someone else's actions to happen for us. Real integrity can never be lost by carelessness. It is a part of us, and needs no instructions to be there. The owner of the book shop had never had any real integrity, and this was shown to John, by his invasive, almost aggressive act. He still had an odd honest bone in him, but it was as crooked, as a banana. "The integrity of the game is everything." Peter Ueberroth, an American businessman, said this. To succeed the right way in business, we do need to honour, and to value highly, integrity. Photo Credit: The photo used in this article was sourced from the free media site, pixabay.com The picture is of John reading his new book, in his dream.