In the three weeks that I've been at IMOS, this bunkmate who sleeps on the bed adjacent to mine has been asking to borrow a few of my things quite often. My slippers, soap, charger, earphones and hangers are among things that have been requested, and many a time I lend them to him because he's overall a pretty decent guy, so I don't feel inclined to refuse his requests.

Thing is, for two weeks now he's forgotten to bring his slippers, so he comes to me almost every night when he wants to use them to go bathe or chat with his friend on the phone outside the bunk. Yet on the occasion that he does so and he gets back when I'm already asleep, he doesn't place the slippers at the foot of my bed, where all personal footwear goes as dictated by bunk layout. Instead, I find them the next morning at the foot of the ladder to his bed. It's probably no biggie to many, it's just a few steps away from my bed, climbing out of bed to get them is no exercise.

The conclusion that I draw, though, is that he doesn't accord sufficient respect to me or my property by doing that. Having lent my slippers to him, the least he could do is to return it to me in a proper manner; just as it's nary a walk for me to get them slipped back into my feet, the same ease and simplicity of the task is there too for him to simply place it at the foot of my bed. This is where the problem lies. I know that many peers would wonder why I'm being so petty about something so small, and yet I also see things the way my dad sees it; that there's more to it than just the slippers. I see both sides of the coin and I wonder to myself which makes more sense for me to listen to.

My dad always says things like, the way you upkeep your room/the manner in which you cut fruits/the sequence you have to completing small tasks always will amount to the way you handle much bigger things in life, because the small things always dictate your underlying patterns in the way you shape the rest of your life. Similarly, it's not just about the slipper. It's about how that friend and bunkmate sees me as a friend, and whether he appreciates the simple gesture enough to make it seem to me like he never borrowed the slipper at all. Just as you don't leave the car you borrowed from your dad low on gas when you return it, you should return other things to their proper order once you're done with borrowing it, no matter how small. It not only shows that you respect the person, but makes the person more inclined to lend you his things the next time around. Besides, the other impression that I get when he leaves my slippers at the foot of his bed is that on some level, he doesn't care consciously about the owner's subsequent desire to use it.

So am I overreacting? I guess it's a moot point to ask that question, but I'm wondering if my point of view makes any sense. 18 years of growing up in the presence and logic of my dad makes me think this way, and I can't help but slowly but surely find sound logic to what he contemplates. Yet given that even his own peers sometimes think he's overreacting to small things in life, does it make more sense to just leave these thoughts on a different level and flow with the gears of reasoning that more or less the rest of society functions with?

3 comments