kleptomania | Magnanimous Word

Too bird-brained she was
To thus get caught red-handed
Thief’s Labor Lost

Through my little Haiku poem, I’m not making fun of some woman caught stealing by a shopkeeper’s CC camera. But the shock or disbelief is there when we see some decent person stealing petty things.

“What? She was stealing? My gosh!! But she’s so well-off. Does she need to steal a lipstick?”

“Oh! She’s a kleptomaniac”

Kleptomania is the inability to refrain from the urge to steal items and is done for reasons other than personal use or financial gain, defines Wikipedia

So, is this stealing compulsion a depression of a some sort? After all this act is for some emotional satisfaction rather than material gains. Kleptomaniacs often steal things they do not really need.

While this mania is not totally harmless, there are often no ill-intentions as such towards the product owner. That’s why stealing is carried out without any intelligent plan, and that is the reason so many kleptomaniacs are caught, esp. when it becomes too much of a habit. Like when they steal too often or steal too many things.

And because most kleptomaniacs are women, it makes sense that women often make news when they get caught stealing petty things.

Men. Now men either do not steal that often…or they do not get caught.

Jokes apart, women are generally known to seek happiness through shopping, what we positively call ‘retail therapy’. For some people, excessive shopping that is seemingly harmless, does help fill their emotional vacuum or loneliness, while others who are even more emotionally disturbed, take their shopping addiction one step further, as they begin to find comfort in an addiction called stealing.

Possibly it’s not as innocent as that. What if they are established small time thieves and not harmless kleptomaniacs. It could be a bad habit from childhood carried till adulthood. A moral lesson not learnt the whole life, as nobody punished them for their first wrongdoing.

Whatever it is, the need is to not make fun of anyone who’s addicted to this kind of petty stealing but get the person to seek counseling so that the root cause of their problem can be traced. Try saving a human heart and soul if you can, with love and kindness.

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