Thankful for Thievery

My home was broken into a few weeks ago. Obviously, that was not a great moment in the life of my household. A window was opened with a prybar and then smashed the glass. Whoever came in walked through the house, opened up drawers, and left with my laptop (and the power cord).

And the end result of the whole thing was that I felt pretty grateful.

Partly I felt grateful because all that was taken was my laptop...no jewelry, nothing irreplaceable. Partly I felt grateful because I have automatic backup so I didn't lose any pictures or documents. Partly I felt grateful because I have homeowners' insurance, so the window repair and the new laptop will be covered with just a modest deductible.

Mostly I felt grateful because I realized just how privileged I was to have all of those things...and because I could imagine being someone who didn't have any of those things, whose life had evolved in such a way that breaking into a house with a prybar was a good idea, and I felt grateful that this person had only taken a laptop and not wandered around my house smashing things.

I want to be clear--lots of people have difficult lives and do NOT choose crime and that is by far the better path. Breaking into people's houses is never right. But somehow this experience made me feel the full weight of my financial privilege, to be aware of how lovely my house is and how filled it is with things that indicate my privileged status in the world. And I can imagine that coming into that lovely house, when your own house and your own life might look very different, would be an experience that reinforced your own sense of not being privileged.

I suppose one of the things I wish is that those of us who are privileged and those who are not were in each others' houses not just when we are breaking into them. And I realize that my privilege is nothing compared to the privilege others experience--I've been starting to study up on wealth disparities in America and the data is eye-opening.

Stealing people's laptops isn't right. And my sense of gratitude isn't that impressive, since it's based in part on homeowners' insurance and backed-up data. But for what it's worth, this whole experience has me thinking about privilege, income disparity, and why there are people in the country who can lose laptops like it's nothing and others who break into houses to steal them.