The First thing To Do When You Panic

...is nothing. Today I was reminded of what it felt like to have my wallet suddenly dissappear in a foreign country and find yourself with no means of supporting yourself whatsoever.

I went through shock and denial very quickly, they get out of the way with a few searches of every possible place I could have misplaced my wallet or whatever. Travelling if it teaches you anything, teaches you that you simply don't exist except for the fact that you have money in your pocket to exchange for goods and services.

So I imagine losing your wallet when travelling alone in a foreign country is much like how Ariel Felt when Ursula took her voice in exchange for legs.
Except I don't have great legs that can nab me a handsome patriarch to look after me. Nor singing crab companions for that matter.

But in Abe Lincolns tradition of 'If I only had 5 minutes to cut down a tree I'd spend 4 of them sharpening my axe' or whatever, when you panic I highly recommend sitting down and letting time pass. 5-10 minutes is plenty. It isn't so much about planning or getting your shit together or whatever - it's about running an empirical experiment where you can prove to your own mind that the world isn't going to fall apart instantly.

Once you realise you have space to move it's much easier to come up with rational solutions. For me it was cancelling my card and stopping pending transactions from going through. Ordering emergency cash, and a replacement card. Then I just had to go to the police and arrange a 'pay on checkout' deal with my hostel.

The second time, I just had to devise some collatoral to offer to the hostel (because I dimwittedly arrived in town with no money having stuffed up a transfer of funds) which was refused on account of my trustworthy face and then digging up some old Japanese currency so I had enough money to eat a meal.

The thing was that in hindsight these situations were pretty easy to survive, and I could have survived a lot worse by sleeping on the streets or something.

Panic flares up to drive us furiously away from something unpleasant, but often it doesn't inspire the easiest, most graceful or even most immediate solutions to passing through our current state of affairs. Often the easiest and simplest thing to do is to endure the unpleasant and take it from there.

Having said all this if you can see the thief making off with your wallet, chase him down, don't do nothing.