Every man For himself

There comes a time in someone's life where when certain things happen, you realize that no matter how much people care, you still have to go through it alone.

Last night, some time around 12am, I was on my bed getting ready to doze off when I heard some noise downstairs, I was too tired to go investigate but had overheard people talking about something that had to do with a stolen phone.

Well fast forward to this morning and almost everyone were gathered downstairs, shouting at one another for some reason. It turned out last night, someone had laid outside, to rest for a few minutes and he had placed his phone on his chest before dozing off by mistake, and by the time he woke up, his phone was no where to be found.

Someone had tiptoed to where he was resting and stole the phone. And due to the fact that happened in the middle of the night, they (the people present that night) had decided that the best decision to take was to wait until morning to conduct a general search for the phone.

The plan was to leave the hostel gate locked and not open it by 6am like we usually do, until a proper search of everyone's room had been conducted. Well, unfortunately, early this morning, someone had gone ahead to open the gate to allow some people who were out the previous night to come in, and he had forgotten to lock it back..

So that morning, the reason for all of that shouting and quarreling was because someone had opened the gate. By the time I got downstairs, the guy whose phone was stolen just stood there, looking defeated because he knew a search would no longer be relevant, seeing how the thief would have gone out with the phone already...

But what caught my attention as I stood in the middle of all of that commotion, watching everyone shout at each other, was the friend to the guy whose phone was stolen. And this was because he looked like the one who was pained the most by the entire ordeal. He looked so determined to help his friend catch the thief who has stolen the phone, to the extent that he almost fought with someone who had said something dumb concerning the issue.

But funny enough, about an hour after that entire thing happened, I saw that same friend laughing with some other guys in the hostel, while the guy whose phone was stolen just sat down quietly in a corner, probably reminiscing about the good old days that he had with his phone.

_{photo by Gadiel Lazcano}

It made me realize that no matter how someone tries to show you that they care, if they're not the one in trouble, or in this case, if they're not the one whose phone was stolen, their level of sadness wouldn't be as much as yours.. And at the end of the day, while you're seated in a corner crying over what you've lost, they could be in their corner having a good time because unlike yours, their sadness will only be temporarily.

And it's not a bad thing, it's just life.. You shouldn't expect people to feel the same level of sadness that you feel when you both haven't had the same lost. This is why even at burial ceremonies, you will still find people laughing and having a good time there.