Bloganuanry Day 4
Today’s prompt: What is a treasure that’s been lost?
The first thought that came to mind was my mum. She was a treasure to us and to many that she came into contact with. Her passing was a great loss to our family and to the community she lived and worked it.
There is another treasure though that also came to mind and that is our safety or perhaps I should say, our freedom. In South Africa, it’s often our physical safety and freedom. Like most countries, there are good spots and bad spots in every city and I try to keep to the good spots but there are still extra precautions we have to take like having burglar bars on our windows and having security gates on our doors and you can’t leave valuables in plain sight in your car. We therefore live in a state of constantly being on our guard which means that we constantly in a state of stress which can’t be good for us. I do believe that there are very few countries in the world where people are safe but I guess in SA, the risk of being the victim of a crime is higher than most especially in some areas.
I do believe that as wonderful as the internet is, it has made it easier for criminals to grow their networks and to get to us. It is actually so sad. I didn’t realise how vunerable we were until I read Jeffery Deaver’s book “The Broken Window” in about 2009. Although it was fictional, it was frightening to discover how our information could be manipulated and used if it lands in the wrong hands. While identity theft was always a possibility, criminals had to work much harder to get your information before the internet came along. So while it so much easier to connect these days and to share, how you put the information out there can put you at risk. This unfortunately is a global problem.
I will always take whatever precautions I can to hinder the criminals but I won’t let the fear of what could happen dictate everything that I do. If I did I wouldn’t have this blog and then I wouldn’t have met all the awesome people that I have over the past year especially.
That’s it for today. Bye for now.
Grounded African 