Can
all acts in life be summarised succinctly as theft? Not
just acts of crime, including murder since it steals life, but even
adultery?
The
theft of someone else's partner, though not usually achieved through
kidnapping but conducted on a mutual basis, could be considered by
the injured party a form of thievery, which once unearthed might
cause the relationship to irretrievably break down, and which is then
aggravated further if the new squeeze moves in: takes over what was
your position as if the vacancy, naturally without your consent or
knowledge, had been advertised and filled. Tempers flare, suspicions
rise. Anger and jealously reigns, reigns big time.
If
there's kids it's more complicated. There's this person who's not you
with your ex-partner in your ex-property and acting as a parent would
in a 'guardian' capacity and around them far more often than you are
in spite of access arrangements, which if you feel this situation has
been 'done to you', it must be weird – almost a looking in at your
old life, feeling that it's been snatched away and you've been
forced to make a new one. You can't rectify what you're seeing, and
even if at some point in the future you do reconcile, time will have
passed, aged, and yet not erased the hurt.
But
then what I'm doing is conjecturing. I have no idea, really. It's
never happened to me, but then
I have issues with intimacy, coupled with the fact that, in truth,
I'm a solitary being. Sure, I know of failed relationships and the
acrimony and tensions that can follow, but relationships fall apart
for many reasons, with adultery cited rather less than you think, but
if you really ruminate on it, long and hard, 'theft' is likely to be
involved, somewhere, when it comes to the split, as in the dividing
of finances and property accumulated in the years together. What each
partner thinks is rightfully theirs, due to either the investment of
time or money, or both. And that's before the thorny issue of
alimony, which if kids are not a factor either because there are none
or because they've grown, can be an even bigger thorn so that the
wronged partner, the one that didn't walk out, can feel more wronged,
more stolen from, and that can be a hell of a knot to untangle. I
sure wouldn't want to be a mediator, in this life or any other.
But
as I said, I'm inexpert when it comes to such matters and so I take a
pragmatic view, because what interests me rather more is the puzzle
of human behaviour: why we do what we do, why we respond differently
to a set of circumstances, and why, if our reactions are questioned,
we find they lead to a source: some kind of experience so deeply
embedded that we imagine our actions are independent when in fact
they're not, though that's not, I hasten to add, an excuse, yet
recognising such conditioning helps us understand more – about
ourselves, about our nearest and dearest, about external others we
have dealings with – and how these reactions don't have to be
primed like a detonator or an alarm clock.
At
the same time it's important to note that whilst there are a range of
emotions, we each demonstrate and employ these to varying degrees. If
'Thou shalt not judge' were a commandment, and successfully kept,
would that prevent presumptions and accusations from being not just
thought but flung? 'Thou shalt not steal' has not had the desired
effect.
Theft
is a motivator which if applied on broader terms to the acquisition
of human beings alongside material items and status symbols can feed
personalities that, above all else, like to crush and win; those who
are comfortable selling ideas to get what they want. However, at the
opposite end of this scale is a self-fulfilled prophecy: Suicide,
where someone has intentionally robbed themselves, and in-between
there's far, far pettier crimes: 'borrowed' office stationery, and
even birds who steal knickers off washing lines for their nests.
Is
that what it, this life and the next (if you are that way inclined),
is all about? Always wanting something you haven't got and are
unlikely to get unless you resort to a form of theft.
Picture credit: The Lovers II, 1928, Rene Magritte