Thief!
When I was in high school, I had a problem with stealing. It never escalated into anything serious, and the things I stole weren’t very glamorous, but it was still a problem. I would take things like pens from Office Depot or a scarf from American Eagle. I never stole from individual people, only big stores and companies, since it was easier on my conscience that way. I think during my senior year, I stole a total of twenty books from Barnes and Noble, three graphing calculators from my high school, and a handful of panties from Victoria’s Secret.
I didn’t steal things because I couldn’t afford them. I stole because it was fun, and because I felt smart doing it. I thought I had figured out this system and was operating above it while everyone who paid for the things they wanted remained below. The drive to steal probably also came out of a need to create some sort of danger in my life. I had always been a fairly good kid and never ventured far from home or the familiar, and stealing made me feel like less of a coward, like someone worth paying attention to.
When I was a junior in high school, about twenty of us went on a week-long trip to the east coast. The plan was that we would stay at Valley Forge for a couple of days and then spend the rest of our time in Philadelphia and Washington D.C. We visited a bunch of landmarks and touristy sites (most of which I have little or no recollection ever visiting), and spent a lot of time perusing the narrow aisles of gift shops filled with useless trinkets and patriotic memorabilia. From each of those small shops I bought an item or two. From about a third of them, I stole an item or two. Again, it wasn’t like I desperately had to have that small-scale replica of the Liberty Bell, or that I simply could not live without the plastic quill and ink set that came with an overpriced copy of the Declaration of Independence. I couldn’t have cared less about the objects themselves. My true prize was seeing the shocked faces of my classmates, whose eyes got wide as they watched me take the items off the shelf one by one and conspicuously drop them into my bag. Once the deed had been done, I continued to shop, smiling to myself as the witnesses to my crime searched for video cameras and wary store attendants. The whole affair was immensely satisfying. I mean, there they were, panicking, clearly afraid that I would get caught and somehow drag them down with me; and here I was, calm, poised, without a care in the world. The further their jaws dropped, the more I showed off how cool and collective I could be. And the more frantic their whispers for me to stop, the greater my pride swelled. I was not the good little Asian girl they thought I was. No, I was a rebel, a bad kid, someone to fear and respect.
All of this sounds stupid and trivial now, but back then it mattered, because my image mattered. I didn’t want anyone to think I was one of those yuppie kids who always did their homework and never ditched class. I needed everyone around me to know that I was smart, but that I was also above the overrated values of hard work and discipline. And it was to that end that I stole. I consciously did the wrong things for the sake of creating an image of rebelliousness and “cool.” Stealing made me feel different, set apart, like I was someone worth getting to know. The sad part is, I never stole anything really impressive. I relied on this action to set me apart, but I could never commit myself to it fully because I was afraid of going too far. In the end, I had nothing substantial to show for my bad habit, and was further exposed as a coward, a nobody.
Do I regret the choices that I made back then? Of course I do. If I had only worked hard in high school and not cared so much about being different, I could have gotten into a much better university and the trajectory of my entire life could have been very different. But who cares? How can I focus on my regrets when the almighty God tells me that he is working all things for my good? How can I be crushed by the weight of my mistakes when I am already overwhelmed by the glory of my God? What matters now is not my regrets, but the fact that I don’t need to make the same mistakes over again. I don’t have to try and create an image or an identity for myself, because I have been given a perfect one by the grace of God, through my faith in Jesus Christ. I am loved. I am accepted. I am a somebody.
