Someone once said, a fool learns from his own mistakes and I wise man learns from the mistakes of others. Although I'd have to say the label of "fool" should be reserved more for the person that doesn't even learn from their mistakes than the person that does, I can see some truth to what this person says. Why it takes personal suffering for a person to change their behavior, instead of by the suffering of others engaged in the same behavior in the past is really a sad reality of life and I've been guilty of learning this way myself, just recently as a matter of fact. And since it's too late for me to learn from the carelessness of others with respect to their personal property, I have no choice but to learn from my own and the lesson is this...
Don't let whatever utopian world you'd like to live in remove you from the real world that you are a part of. In the context of my recent theft, this means that regardless of my desire to live in a "you don't have to lock your door" kind of world, the reality of things is that we live in a world where people steal if given the opportunity and in acknowledging this, I should have bought a lock for the outside of my room like everyone else had done at the Salvation Army. Prior to this experience, I would have said anyone with a lock on the outside of their room was just excessively paranoid, just like I always told this to my parents when they always had, and I'm sure at this very moment, have their door locked while inside the house, but only now, do I realize that this kind of a precaution is in fact wisdom.
After all it's not the 97% of the people out there that we have to protect ourselves from, it's the other 3% and although I still won't say a person that learns from their mistakes is a fool, the person that acts as if the 3% don't live in this world, is the fool.
Lesson learned.
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