One of the major challenges of life is the problem of theft. Within our lives we have to face the reality of theft in a variety of different ways and contexts. Some of these types of theft are rather straightforward–excessive taxation, having other people take our property, or the “stealing of time” that business owners care so much about, unless they are stealing the times of others themselves through poor service or other means. Some types of theft are far less obvious, such as the gain we might make for acting on insider information that is denied to others, stealing from those who are ignorant for our own profits. For all the types of theft that we have to deal with, there comes a failure to respect what belongs to others and a diversion of that property and those resources for our own personal benefit without properly paying for those resources or properties or respecting the rights of property owners.

It may seem easy to recognize the property that belongs to others. For example, if someone has their own thumb drive, it would clearly be an act of theft to take that thumb drive and to hide it or use it from a coworker, to give but one example. Likewise, if someone goes to a business as a (potential) customer, their time could very easily be wasted (or stolen) by slow and inattentive service. For example, one time a few months ago I went to get an oil change and ended up there for several hours while they attempted in vain to rotate some tires that I did not ask to be rotated and that in the end they could not rotate. Fortunately, I tend to bring books with me when my car is being worked on, a way that I try to avoid wasting too much time that could be better spent otherwise. There may even be theft involved (at least in the eyes of government) if a parent rents a room to a working adult child but does not report the income, even where that rental income may be clearly designed to provide a way for people to help pay their fair share of family expenses in a rather straightforward and low-key way. Theft, in many ways, depends on the eye of the beholder.

As might be expected, most of us focus on theft insofar as it relates to us. This is perhaps lamentable, but we cannot expect other people to understand our perspective unless they are either particularly sensitive to the concerns of others (which is not something that can be relied upon) or unless we are articulate about our own perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and concerns. Since we cannot do very much about other people unless they allow us to influence them, we ought to work on ourselves to the greatest extent possible. Since our influence is greatest with regards to ourselves, we ought to seek to do what we can to give us the best chance to express ourselves to others. Our ability to be understood may not be certain, and our confidence and competence in communication may need work, but if we want people to respect our boundaries and our possessions and our domains, expressing ourselves is a vitally important matter.

When we ask ourselves who the thieves are in our lives, there may be a lot of people to look at. We may look at ourselves, and wonder what we have stolen from others. Have we robbed others of their safety, of their security, of their peace of mind, of hours of worry and anguish spent, or hours of sleep lost in anxious care or nightmares [1]? Have we robbed others of knowledge or information that would be useful in having them make wiser decisions in life? Have we robbed others of their fair share, their just portion, of a benefit that is due to them? To be unjust and exploitative is to be a thief as well, since we rob what belongs to others, even large groups of people, for private and personal profits. Where are the thieves? Sometimes they are ourselves; sometimes they are our friends or enemies or families; sometimes they are businesses or governments. Sometimes we are all thieves in our own ways and in our own times. A proper respect for others, however, ought to curb and limit such tendencies, though.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/robbers-of-sleep/