I Lost My Wallet and Phone

We are bound to lose things we love.

Somewhat still in a raya mood, it is only 7th Shawal, somebody organized a futsal match at Subang Jaya, an activity always welcomed by those who can make it. It used to be a weekly activity back then, but those were the times. Now that work has occupied most of our lives, less time is available for futsal and more time to bulge bellies.

But long story short, we lost our possessions; our wallets and phones. It has been a very common practice for us to keep the stuffs in our bags and put them to the closest bench next to our court. It has been the practice every week, for years. But this time, somebody stole it, right in front of our noses.

I learned two things about this. Well, a lot more actually, but I would like to share two. First, about how ignorant I am to other people. Five of us lost stuffs while the rest didn't, and yet all of us stayed pretty late through the tedious process we went through, conducting a spotcheck at the exit gate of the futsal arena (which eventually the manager deemed illegal) and the lengthy police report. I remembered my brother just lost his wallet, too, quite recently, about two or three months ago. I was just like, "Oh definitely you lost it, I'm sorry but I don't want to give you false hope that you might just probably find it back." Another incident that might probably relate to this incident was a few weeks ago, when a friend of mine texted me, telling an officemate of his just got his car stolen. Given to me was the plate number and the car model and colour of the stolen car, with the hope that the message could be spread, and the thief to be nabbed. I - with the assumption that people might be just as ignorant as me - decided not to forward the message to anyone, hoping that other people would not be as ignorant as me and forward it to their friends. Now, I'm in both their shoes. Now I know how it feels to lose a wallet (mind you, when you lose a wallet, you will never bother about the cash and valuable items in there, you will only care about the documents), now I know how it feels to ask people for help detecting a thief. Thankfully, people do help me, but I never return the favour.

Second thing I learned, Islam fills my life such that nothing is a loss too big. Or perhaps I should say that all religions are like that. Whatever single thing that you love, you are bound to lose them. We are bound to lose our wealth, our possession, our property, one way or another, theft robbery, natural disaster, depreciation of value, or even misplaced. We are bound to lose our health and physical ability, we are bound to lose the people we love, we are bound to lose everything, because the truth is, we don't own anything. Allah owns everything, and He owns everything that we have, so in a way, we are not losing things, it is merely taken away from us. And we are all bound to lose every single thing we love because everything is mortal, except for One, the Immortal. With Him, you know you have the eternal love, throughout our existence and our non-existence. And in Islam, or any other religion, you do have certain things that you don't need to guard. You own money and you need to protect it, but when you donate, you'll get rewards that need no protection from theft. It promotes generosity and distribution of wealth, at the same time, eliminates fear of losing wealth.

Theft is a disgrace and shameful, degrading act, especially when committed on individuals (large, well-orchestrated thefts on organizations seem less undignified, though). I don't think it would be easy for me to let it go (or halalkan as we Malay say it), I do hope that justice will prevail (though I do think it is incredibly unlikely), but I do understand that thieves do have low dignity and pride, therefore they won't consider the implications that we have to face in the next few days, queuing to make our new identity cards, driving licence, bank cards and stuff, but oh well, at least we are not harmed. I know some people got injured or even died from snatch thieves and armed robberies, at least we left unscathed.

I'm looking forward to a weekend that I plan to do nothing.