That Time I Had a Stolen Copy of the Theft Act

There was a time when to be of good character was a powerful metric – when your word was your bond.

These days, in our fast paced, tech driven, social media influenced world, it appears to be imperative that we question everything and everyone. That we need to bear in mind that what someone says, or sells, or portrays is not necessarily the truth. We are to be mindful of misleading AI content, wealth scams, fraudster calls from unknown numbers, even friends and lovers can deceive and betray. No wonder hyper vigilance and nervous system overload is rife and anxiety rampant. Given that we simply cannot hope to anticipate or protect ourselves from all of it, what is a person to do?

My offering here is that the most supportive action we can take is to look to ourselves. We must seek out the quiet small voice within us that informs our own truth, our inner compass and listen closely. This inner knowing can make us aware of uncomfortable things, advise actions we would rather not take and ego can be quick to silence it in favour of something easier, but it must be retrieved and listened to if we are to find our authentic path. The path that speaks, as the Yogis assert, of fulfilment and joy being our birthright.

How can we find it? What are the tells? It’s noticing the body tensing when it speaks to a particular person or enters a particular room...it’s noticing the hint of nausea or a discomfort in your abdomen when speaking.. are you telling a convenient lie or talking behind a person’s back, maybe saying something you don’t truly believe? How about registering that you were feeling fine one minute yet now you feel anxious\angry\stressed. Is that newer feeling even yours or are you picking up someone else’s? These moments can be fleeting and we are told from very young to disregard or justify such signals.. “just your imagination”, “everyone feels like that sometimes, it’s just nerves get over it”, “you need to be more ..professional\easy going\fun” and many, many more configurations of similar messaging. Is it any surprise then, that if we disregard and disrespect our own whispers and feelings long enough, we will end up not being able to hear them at all...not really knowing ourselves and what our authentic voice even sounds like? Perhaps this would explain some of the uneasiness, anxiety or loneliness we feel and are told is prevalent today? Likely too, we will have little problem disregarding, disrespecting or truly listening to others - if we have had to put up and shut up, or just deal with it, then why shouldn’t they? Or how about, “everyone else gets away with it and they seem to be ok.. what does it matter if I do it too?” Because I would contend, there is a cost is why. Every time you ignore that small prod, talk over that small voice, there’s a quiet stamping out of the small flame that flickered briefly, lighting your own truth. Your soul suffers.

I am not saying that we do these things out of malice, there are so many motives behind what we say and do and many of them can be completely subconscious. Not only this, but parts of us have made decisions about experiences we have had and they can be at complete loggerheads with each other over the best way forward now. This can result in vociferous internal conflict, sometimes resulting in us acting in favour of something that can turn out to be utterly self sabotaging. To lose our inner compass is to risk becoming completely lost. We must listen out for it and pay attention when it directs us.

This intentional, sometimes intuitive, listening for clues and traces has long been fascinating to me and informs the work I am doing with clients now. What I am listening for in our sessions is that inner compass, noticing the discrepancies between what someone says one minute and then differently the next, or between their words and their behaviour.. then drawing attention to them. This is how, together, my clients and I track the path to who they truly are. For me, guiding someone back to their own inner compass, their personal “true north” is fundamental to them being able to navigate towards the future their spirit is crying out for with an honesty, integrity and self trust that feeds rather than starves the true self.

In musing about this, my mind was drawn back to another pivotal story for me.

Flippin 40 years ago! Via a path that was both challenging as it was fortunate, I found myself living in a Hackney Council squat in a sink estate that was none of the super cool and trendiness currently espoused about “Hackers” by the hipster set these days. Having grown up amongst the rolling green of Northamptonshire and pretty much as green as that myself, I had come to London to study law with visions of justice, wealth and a glittering future. To observe that Hackney was confronting.. jaw dropping.. eye opening...just does not begin to convey the depths of the education that was gifted to me when I lived there, yet it did deliver on what my father had said to me when dropping me off at the halls of residence that first Sunday: “Remember, the degree is going to be only 50% of what you will learn here”.

Initially, I would sit in my allocated room in the ramshackle Victorian mansion and eye the council estate over the wall...the burnt out cars, discarded mattresses and abandoned shopping trollies, the washing hanging across red brick balconies stacked on top of each other in long, lowish, four storey red brick buildings set in squares. These housed multiple 2 and 3 bedroomed flats that looked back at me through anonymous windows, rows of them, several boarded up.

After the countryside, the noise was unbelievable, cars roaring, sirens, shouts and screams, doors banging, glass shattering and the almost constant thud of reggae coming from a speaker seriously too big for whatever flat it was coming from. Green as I was, I could not believe that people actually lived like that. Perhaps it was my fascination that drew me in, perhaps it was fate, but when it came time to find accommodation for my second year, one of those flats is exactly where I found myself living.

Studying for a law degree is demanding stuff - the sheer depth and weight of the knowledge and text books, the centuries of case law and precedent – that’s a given. What I had not bargained for was being challenged by life to question what that all meant for me personally almost on the daily. On the one hand, I would attend classes in the City, which was revelling in Thatcher era boom, learning about the intricacies of the law and in the bars there was crowing of £million bonuses, whilst once home, I would be living in amongst what the media at the time termed “the underclass”. This estate was a seething melting pot of widely diverse characters which included long term unemployed, ex cons, drug addicts, burglars, shop lifters.. families, refugees, artists, crazy creatives, street entertainers, you name it. Many of the people I knew then were in situations where the law was by no means an absolute, but something that needed to be bent or overridden entirely if they were to survive. Yes I have stories, many stories, but my mind is drawn to one particular one today…

My flatmate’s boyfriend was charismatic and erudite, with an awe inspiring grasp of politics that could explain the context and meaning behind the news and politics of the day – which in mid 1980s Britain were turbulent, socially divisive and hard to navigate. Exposed as I was at this point to a wholly different perspective on the world, it was Rob that was probably the most educated, but extreme, voice articulating what it was I was looking at. He could just as easily be found deep in the pages of a broadsheet as listening to the Dead Kennedys whilst browsing a cherished copy of The Anarchists Handbook. Rob was however, emotionally complicated. Whilst in those days we had all been known to have the odd dab of speed to get a party started, Rob liked his drugs considerably harder and was prone to mood swings and a volatile temper that tend to accompany that kind of addiction. Despite his intellect and my empathy for whatever must have happened to drive how he was, he was pretty unnerving, if not a little scary to be around.

At the time, credit cards were in their infancy. Availability was relatively unrestricted and Rob had taken to applying for them regularly under various made up names. He would then get them delivered to a random address and claim bureaucratic error when claiming them from unsuspecting tenants around the estate. Then Rob would go on a spending spree, selling his purchases in order to fund himself, justifying his actions by denouncing the credit card companies for their exploitation and greed. His moral compass appeared to have no issue with this as it seemed that to his mind he was more a modern day Robin Hood, his behaviour a political statement and a punishment of banking establishments than it was an actual crime. As a diligent “good girl” law student, compromised by not having any money either, this was troubling and difficult for me to deal with. My flatmate was hopelessly in love with him, despite their relationship being turbulent, and neither she, nor my other housemates challenged Rob about the legality of it all. They seemed ok with him just doing his thing. I so didn’t want to be the one coming across as the totally uncool, holier than thou housemate, or as judging any of them, so politely cited assignments or revision as the reason I couldn’t join them for dinner on the latest card. But then the challenge had become direct.

Summer 1987, Rob said he had been sad my degree work meant I missed out so much so had bought me every one of my third year law books, at the time over £200 worth and to a broke student in the 80s that was a LOT. Thing is, third year is when we finally got to do criminal law, so for two weeks I sat contemplating whether having a stolen copy of the Theft Act was ironic and story worthy enough to justify keeping it.

Parts of me debated endlessly amongst themselves..no one would know, it was unlikely Rob would get caught and if he did, unlikely he would drop us all in it or that I would be in more trouble than anyone else and none of them were bothered about any of it so why should I be? Was I being a stiffy straight in rejecting the offer, when everything in me at the time wanted me to be cool and edgy like they all were? Would they reject me if I did - become hostile thinking I was judging them for accepting ill gotten benefits and turn against me? Would he in particular be dangerous to reject? It did not feel like a small dilemma. I wanted them to like me..wanted to be allowed to stay in the gang, could I compromise to have that? Because, rationalise and justify all I wanted, it still felt wrong.

It became about identity. Who am I? Why would I want a career in law if I am willing to compromise myself and the law to save myself some money? Is who I am worth compromising to get away with not running into conflict with my friends? I believe there are moments in life that define our character. Times when we are challenged to stand for something. Most importantly, to stand by ourselves and what we believe is right for us - by our own moral compass. Even if it comes at the potential cost of something we really would like to have… coolness, friends, a bargain.

Reluctant, still full of self doubt and a bit terrified, I politely returned the books to Rob. Amazingly, he was fine about it, although I wasn’t off the hook completely. He asked that I ask around my fellow course mates to see if any of them would buy the books off him and I felt obliged to at least say I had asked. More concerned about Rob’s unpredictability than my classmates potentially denouncing me for pedalling stolen property, I asked around and surprisingly, the first one I approached was incredulous I would reject such an obviously money saving opportunity. To my initial relief, he agreed to buy them. However. My spirit was not to be bargained with. Facilitating the purchase and effectively encouraging a fellow student to jeopardise his own karma still made me complicit. That inner compass decreed – absolutely not. Once again, I was metaphorically wringing my hands with stress...now I had to say no to Rob AND look like a totally uncool loser to the guy on my course.

I did both. It was fine. Kind of annoyingly fine. I mean, a massive relief, but also a little bemusing at just how small an issue it turned out to be. No drama. The fellow student shrugged, the books disappeared and whilst this meant I had to go and painfully buy all the books again myself at great cost, it was worth every bit of the peace in my spirit. I remained in the friend group until it dispersed as life took us all off in different directions. I finished the degree, although abandoned the law career for a spirit quest of a life instead.

My takeaway? It was worth all the angst. Even though everyone involved has almost certainly totally forgotten that this was ever a thing, I have a piece of integrity within me that I feel I earned. As my life has continued and as other challenges have risen to confront me, this little story right here has helped me more than I can say. It stands as a touchstone, a quiet reminder of a strength of character I most aim for. Don’t get me wrong, I have had my moments, but when things are tough, when life is coming at me, can I trust myself to refrain from judging what anyone else is doing and do the right thing by me - even when no one is watching, even if nobody cares? Yes. I assure myself. Yes, I can.

And this is what I mean by having a strong inner compass. Self respect underpins character...ripples out as an ability to be honourable, respect others, do the right thing not the easiest thing. You benefit in ways unquantifiable from having a strong sense of self.

My clients can often feel like they’re stuck, have compromised so much with life that they no longer know how to sound like themselves, let alone navigate to a happy, joyful version. I encourage them and I would encourage you too.. to listen out for that small voice. Seek out your own inner compass and cherish it. Because the noisy world will come clamouring for your attention, hook your ego til it urges you to buy, move, do or be a certain way and you need to know that you can trust yourself to find your own path, follow your own North Star. As someone that has walked that road less travelled, I bear testimony that it will navigate you to a life more miraculous, adventurous and fulfilling than you ever could have imagined.

And should you ever want a tracker to help you recognise the signs and markings, I am here with an ear and years in this terrain.. drop me a dm.