There is this new soap that I am obsessed with these days. The soap has relatively fancy name: New Sweden Egg White Facial Soap. It has come to my attention that this particular soap is highly well-known among those who are interested in skin care. In this column, I would like to introduce my small experience about this soap and some food for thought.

The first floor shower room at Residential College 2 has various bath products piled up without owners. It seems like they have been abandoned by some irresponsible residents who couldn’t be bothered to take their bath products during room changes. If you are a person who doesn’t mind sharing daily supplies with others, most of the bath products left in the first floor shower room are reusable. They are mostly half-used shampoo, facial treatment, and body lotion. One day, I found a fancy-looking blue rectangular box piled with other worn out bath products at the first floor shower room. I opened the box at the spot, and found five milky soaps. As I needed to buy some bath products, I took one of them to my room and started to use it as my personal soap to wash every part of my body, except my face. The fact that it was just a cheap soap picked up at a public shower room made me reluctant to wash my face. After I came to realize that this odorless mundane white soap was luxurious soap well-known for skin care called New Sweden Egg White Facial Soap, I used the soap only for washing my face. Also, I became obsessed with the remaining four soaps that I left at the shower room, concerned whether they had been taken by others. Since I got to know that the soap I stole was a high quality product, I acted as if the soap belonged to me.

Afterwards, this trivial story of Egg White Soap tells us that a lot of misfortune occurs because of getting obsessed with things that do not belong to us. Parents think of their children as a property, force them to study day and night to make them enter good universities. Boyfriends get alert towards every single relationship that their girlfriends make. The CEOs of authoritative companies who get caught for misappropriating the company money often say “I didn’t know that it was the firm capital.” Indeed, as the company belongs to the CEO, he/she may be inclined to remove boundary between his/her money and the money that belongs to the company.

If I didn’t know that the soap I stole was that expensive and luxurious one, would I still get obsessed with the remaining four soaps back in the shower room? Frankly speaking, I would be disappointed to see the remaining soaps being taken away by others, even though the soaps do not even belong to me. I think such emotion arises because I failed to abandon materialistic mind, to separate myself from substances around me, including that Egg White Soap. I would be free from such selfish mind only if I accept the fact that others can take them just like me.