When is it right to steal?

Hello everyone, how was your day? Today was kinda weird for me because I was just sleeping at random intervals and I can't explain why it's happening because it's not exactly a normal thing for me. I slept quite early last night as well as the night before that, so I can't say I am sleep deprived.

I didn't do any strenuous task today, so exhaustion and stress aren't the culprit here. I have been having runny nose right from when I woke up but I refused to take medicine for cold coz I know it will make me sleep, but I still ended up sleeping throughout the day even without taking it and now I still have the runny nose 😆

I just hope this doesn't continue tomorrow, I didn't like the way I wasted today without doing anything. Anyway, let's head over to the main topic for today: when is it right to steal? It's kind of an odd question, right? Don't worry, you will understand why I asked before the end of this article.

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I saw a post on nairaland earlier today about a young man who was caught stealing and he confessed that he resulted to stealing because he owed someone some money and he has to pay back, but couldn't he have looked for a job to earn the money required to pay back his debt? But no, he resulted to stealing

The excuse he gave was very ridiculous and shows he is a very lazy person. But that actually made me wonder about a particular news article I read some months back about a mother who was caught stealing by some cops because she needed to feed her children but instead of arresting her, they pool their money together and bought her some food items. It's a nice gesture, right?

And also, another similar report was of a young man who was caught stealing food items from a shop by the owner but instead of getting him arrested, he took pity on him and employed him as an attendant in the same shop. These two stories got me wondering; is there a justification to stealing? What makes it ok for the mother that was caught stealing to go scotfree while someone that was trying to pay off his debts with stealing was beaten and handed off to the police?

The funny thing is that something like that has happened with the other gender in the spotlight; a father was caught stealing foodstuffs because of his hungry children but he was still beaten and locked up in prison, probably because nobody believed him? It's easy for people to pity single mothers that are caught stealing but they draw the line when it comes to single fathers who did the same thing, what's exactly the difference?

Society will argue that the father's case is different because he is a man and is supposed to go out and work to feed his children, then that makes it right for single mothers to steal? I mean, single mothers also have the same obligation to work and feed her children, but looks like we are not ready for that conversation.

I personally believe there's no justification to stealing and there's no excuse that will make it right. If hunger and single parenting can be used as an excuse to justify stealing, then all other reasons like debt payment should be valid and accepted as well. But the truth is, if we stumble on a situation where we are to judge a single mother for stealing to feed her kids, we might end up letting her go.

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Let's look at it this way; you're a police officer who's patrolling an area at night and you caught a mother stealing bread from a store and giving it to her two young hungry kids who are with her right there to eat, will you arrest them or you will let them go? Most people will probably let them go with a stern warning that they will be caught if they do so again.

Let's face it; we are all humans that are sometimes slave to our emotions, we know the logical thing to do is to follow the law and get her arrested but our emotions and conscience won't exactly allow us go through with it (at least that's true for me). Now let's switch it up and assume it isn't a mother with her kids that was caught by you but a young man and he gave the same excuse of being hungry, will you arrest him or let him go?

Lol, you will probably arrest him, what makes his case different from the mother's case? The hungry children, right? I also wonder how judges in court are able to make the right decisions when presented with a case like this, I will probably be bias most of the time and let my emotions take over, I guess that's why not everyone can be a judge.

Thanks for reading 💖💖💖

Wednesday July 13, 2022