Dear Finders and Losers,
In a second you will have a better idea what I am referring to. No, I am not trying to offend or mock you. I will talk about one of the oldest idioms that we still use in the era of Netflix, Snapchat and Facebook Live. The English language uses a lot of idioms that came from the ancient times, to be more precise Shakespeare times. Therefore, some of them are already outdated and do not connect to the modern reality. One of such phrases is “finders keepers, losers weepers” that has originated in the fifteenth century. A lot of notions and ideas of right and wrong have changed during the past 5 centuries, like we got iPhones and Facebook. The lifestyle and punishments have also been altered. Therefore, it is necessary to state that “finders keepers” phrase should be eliminated from our everyday speech as an unethical one.
First of all, it is important to clarify the meaning of the phrase for a Google generation. When one uses in the conversation “finders keepers” phrase, it means that whoever found a lost item is free to keep it and a person who lost it should forget about it. Basically, you should not be a good person anymore. Such approach may be applicable to the fifteenth century but not for the life when we can track our iPhone online. But today such behavior may be viewed as theft. For instance, this phrase justifies the following incident. You are walking in the hallway. After you took out a phone from your pocket, you also accidentally dropped 20$. However, you have not acknowledged that fact and kept walking. A person who was walking behind you was a witness to a whole incident. According to the idiom “finders keepers, it is acceptable for a passer by to pick up your money and walk away without saying anything to you. However, does it seem ethical and applicable to today’s standards? One of the ways to approach such situation is to give you back your cash which will help you out and keep clean conscious of the passer by. Would you respect your fellow student if they did otherwise? It is likely to be very upsetting to lose a valuable item and not get it back if it was a possibility. Therefore, the mindset of “finders keepers” should be taken away from our society.
At the same time, it is important to remember that when this phrase was used, technological progress did not reach such advancement that we have in the modern days, such as you could not text a person who is sitting next to you in class. Today it is possible to find the owner of the card, phone, or a jacket by using social media. Many items, such as identification cards may have enough personal information on it for a finder to seek for a real owner. Therefore, why would people not do so? It is important to remember about the boomerang of faith. One day you are a finder and another day you are a loser. Maybe, by returning more items to the owners, we can create a more positive karma for the world that we live in, because why not. The kinder behaviors we perform, the better and happier the society around us becomes which means more fun at school.
Moreover, people who lived in the past were likely not to have “Lost and Found” sections that are quite popular these days. One may not even need to go out of his or her way in order to find the owner of the found item. Therefore, our society has moved away from this conquering mindset. Today people have created special stations that encourage the founders not to become keepers.
In conclusion, the idiom “finders keepers, losers weepers” should gradually be eliminated from the usage and should stay with knights in the past. An opportunity to use this phrase may provoke people to perform such unethical behaviors that should not be accepted during the Apple era. However, if we do not use this phrase, it will be erased from our mindset and more owners will be returned their lost dollar bills and iPhones.
