Victim of Theft

This morning, I woke to find out that someone had reached through my study window from the corridor, pushing past the plastic mesh we have put there to prevent the cat from jumping out, to steal my mobile phone. The phone was being charged on a blue plastic shoe-shaped stand, and had a crocheted strap as well as a Doraemon phone pouch attached to it the last I saw it when I placed it there last night at about 1am. The thief had unhooked the phone from it’s charger, and unattached the handstrap and pouch — so that I would have something to remember my phone by, I suppose — and made off with it. E did a check online and found that the last Google Latitude report issued from my phone was at 4am. Of course, I tried calling my phone to make sure that it wasn’t just lost somewhere in the house, and all I got was the usual recorded message: The number you have just called is unavailable.

I’m upset by the loss of the phone, naturally. But what I more upset by is the notion that some stranger reached into my house to steal anything. It makes me feel like the house is unsafe, suddenly, and it makes me feel suspicious of everyone walking down the corridor.

E says that people are opportunistic, and that if they see a way to do something without getting caught, the chances are that they will do it. As a teacher, I wonder that such a person would have so little sense of respect for others’ space and belonging, what kind of lack of guidance they must have. I was telling E that I really am curious about the profile of the person who did this so that I can understand how and why he or she might think to do something like this. Perhaps I am too trusting, too naive.  Just because I respect the goods and property of others doesn’t mean that they do the same.

In a term I have learnt recently, I’m experiencing a serious breakdown of a transparency.

It saddens me that people can’t be trusted.

It saddens me that in a city that is comparatively so affluent, where people lead relatively comfortable lives, there are still those who feel the need to take from others. If this person was less well-off, for whatever reason, I would still find it hard to respect that person because what they took was not a necessity item. Even what it would get you on the market would not be enough to sustain you for that long really; it’s not that much that it would take more than a month of honest work to earn.

I feel pity for the person who did this because the vision he or she has for his or her own life is not big enough to encompass the possibility of real success and fulfillment. He or she didn’t even have enough vision to take the charger – since it was already attached to the phone  at the time anyway – along with the phone, so whatever they might use the phone for, it can’t go beyond the next 24 hours unless a charger is bought at some point.

There are things to still be grateful for: a loving and supportive husband, a comfortable home and lifestyle. Being alive.

In the larger scheme of things, the phone isn’t what matters. The information on it also isn’t what matters to me because the truly vital stuff I have in my mind anyway.  What matters to me in all this has to do with trust in people, and how it’s being communicated to me that measures truly have to be more extreme to prevent people from acting on temptation.

It’s so very sad.