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Monday, August 29, 2011

It's a STEAL!!!

PickpocketsImage by Xurxo Martínez via Flickr

Getting robbed or pickpocketed in a 3rd world country is almost a rite of passage at times. I almost feel as if you haven't really lived until you stare into your knapsack and realize that there is one less object there. One fine day in Buenos Aires for me, that one less object in my knapsack was my wallet full of money along with my all important bank card.

Nobody can stop stuff from happening. I know that North American society is all about living in a safe secure bubble and getting to your grave in one piece and with the most toys as possible.  But the fact of the matter is that stuff happens. The only way for me to prevent stuff from happening is to not leave my home or walk out the door. 

It was a rare case where I was here in BA and I was feeling distracted by some happenings in my world that were taking place outside of the country. When I feel distracted, I often make silly mistakes when my mind is trying to process things. In the past when I have wound up in a car accident, it was almost always when some kind of chaos had entered my world.

In this instance, I believe that my wallet was taken while I was on the subway. I have taken valuable stuff onto the subway before like my passport and many other things before and never been robbed. But in BA, each time you go out on the street, there are no guarantees. You could get stuff stolen while going through a safe neighbourhood. And there are other neighbourhoods that are known for robberies that you could pass through day in and day out and never get robbed.

My entire time in Buenos Aires, there was only one thing that I feared most....and that was that my bank card (which was the only access I have to my money abroad) would get lost, stolen or broken. And now the very thing that I had feared most had come to past. Strangely enough, when it actually happened, it wasn't as bad as I had imagined it.

Fortunately, I still had some cash on me enough to last a little while.  That week I felt a sense of peace instead of panic that you would imagine one would feel in my situation. Though this whole situation, I realized subconsciously that I thought that losing my card is a bigger problem than any other problem that I could encounter. And the more it came to light that this belief system was hidden inside of me, the more ridiculous it really was.

The fact of the matter is that losing your card and being stuck in the middle of Latin America with no money is no worse of a problem than finding out the subway has been closed down all of a sudden without notification. To the creator of the universe who sent me on this mission, nothing is impossible and there is no problem that is bigger than another. The only place in the world where the problem was huge was in my mind and what I made it out to be. And I began to realize how much I obsessed over my bank card and had thought it was the end of the world if anything happened to it. God allowed it to get taken from me to show me that card or no card, he was gonna take care of me here in this foreign land.


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Amorous Alpacas

Amorous Alpacas