The Mysterious Suitcase Left Unclaimed In A Hotel Lobby Holds Secrets Its Plain Exterior Belying The Unknown Contents That Wait Silently For An Owner To Return

In the centre of a busy city and the marble-clad entryway of a major hotel with its bright lights, rests an item that is curious, a lone baggage that has yet to find an owner. A bag that is blandly designed with an unfinished grey appearance and tattered corners, fitted with only a simple number-lock. Weeks turn to months and still this bag sits by the concierge desk, an empty shell of a former traveller. Hotel employees cannot open this bag due to established hotel protocol, along with the sense of discomfort this bag creates among staff, who are afraid to do so. The hotel\'s staff and visitors have begun using this unremarkable bag as a springboard for their imaginations. The simplicity of the bag is deceiving, for it is filled with an unknown number of secrets waiting for someone to return and retrieve it and carries a history of mystery that everyone walking past associates with it. Will there ever be enough time to discover the bag\'s owners\' identity, or will it remain a testament to many \'what-if\'s? For the business traveller who stops in at the hotel for a couple of days, this bag means they have been forgotten; for the young romantic couple on vacation, the bag may contain letters of love addressed to them and enclose tokens of a meeting arranged. A hotel security officer may view this bag as a potential danger and develop images of threatening behaviour related to this bag rather than the contents of clothing awaiting a traveller\'s return to retrieve it.People naturally want to solve puzzles and create narratives from ambiguities. The suitcase, which is inside the hotel but cannot be opened, brings everyone together in one moment of being a mystery. In the lounge, people will speak to one another in hushed voices about what this item may or may not contain over a cup of tea. They become connected through speculation about this suitcase, which serves as a social item that creates a brief community of strangers focused on the mystery, often more fascinating than the actual potential truth the suitcase holds.

The presence of the suitcase also creates a tension because it is in a space that has been established for transit.

The suitcase creates tension through the unresolved, stagnant nature of the suitcase. All people want to have closure for unfinished stories or tasks. The unclaimed suitcase creates unresolved stories for all individuals who encounter this suitcase, as it will continue to remain in their minds until the closed stories are resolved.

The Ethical and Practical Dilemma for the Institution
The ethical and operational dilemma for the hotel management regarding the suitcase is quite complex. Every hotel has a specific timeframe for lost items and their return, but there are issues surrounding this suitcase as the item is within a grey area. When does the concern that the owner may be distressed by a missing item outweigh the individual\'s right to privacy? The legal guidelines will dictate that a specific amount of time be given before any law enforcement agency becomes involved, but it does not provide any clarity regarding the emotional or reputational calculations for any given situation.

To open the suitcase would mean crossing a threshold. It could provide some of the answers, but that would change the role of the hotel from custodian to investigator. In addition to that, what happens if the contents of the suitcase are valuable? What happens if they are personal or intimate or distressing?The staff must determine the appropriate balance between the likelihood of reuniting the suitcase with the owner and the act of breaking a seal on someone else\'s property (which also happens to be closing off access to a person). The decision of how to respondeffectively based on their knowledge of a hotel (not a store) has serious implications on the hotel image as it relates to the overall operation of the branding, marketing and financial success for the hotel.

The Case of the Lost Owner: A Missing Family Member
The saga of the suitcase begins to reveal the possibilities of the person\'s life. Each story created by the suitcase presents a different perspective of the person. One story may present a workaholic with a closet full of neatly pressed shirts and travel guides (taking vacations). A meticulous planner would likely have carefully packed for their trip before boarding the wrong train.

The excitement of discovering the contents of the suitcase shares an equal story of the forgotten. This reminds us that not all of our \"mysteries\" will result in big finds and/or conclusions. Alternatively, perhaps the suitcase could contain items of illegal activity and/or connections to unsafe transactions—such as counterfeit documents, money and documents that indicate the person was not being forthright with their location, status or associations.

The case of the suitcase also opens a window into a collection of materials that could have been collected for a parent or spouse to give them hope of uniting or being reunited one day; items such as old letters from lost family members, pictures of family and friends, etc. All of these items convey the same idea: that something was missing, lost, and could have provided, through memories, the opportunity for hope or the closure of the absence. The journey of a suitcase from the hotel back home is both history and the reason for hope.The case may be holding information (technological) in the form of a single, encrypted drive—potentially of far more value than all the gold in the world—as well as a large question mark which suggests no possible answer for the contents contained inside, but rather serve only to complicate the mystery and create more questions about the unknown. Within the case may be a set of keys that unlock a door to 장소 I have never visited, or an unknown language novel, or the stub of a ticket to an event, long past, all of which would describe a life in a totally different person to whom I have yet to know. All of this could also potentially be like looking through a fogged-up window into a room I cannot see into, but rather have to wait to be shown what it would be like.

More than just the mystery literally displayed in the unclaimed cases; they are metaphors for the things we don\'t know about ourselves and about other people. The bag itself represents those qualities that were not shown; the knowledge we may possess, but do not allow other people to see (the locked compartment), which typically contains the majority of the best qualities of life and all the pain, sorrow, happiness, and desire, associated with the life we know as our own (the locked compartment).

The concept of a suitcase as a metaphor is a way of representing the unresolved issues and questions in life, such as: Why did (or did not) someone break up with me? How did my family end up in the position where we currently are, and what does the future hold? What happened to my friends at the end of their relationships and why did I never find out?

Finally, the \"unclaimed suitcase\" represents both transience and connection in the modern world. In the era of digital existence, where we are constantly moving and \"trading\" locations with one another and leaving behind a small piece of ourselves in the forms of notes (which may create a legacy), the presence of an anonymous, physically located object feels strangely disconnected yet deeply human in spirit. Looking back at a stranger\'s world, however briefly, gives the person whose world they have crossed a moment to ponder all the many stories going on around them at any given time, highlighting the extent of each of their lives as complex and multifaceted as the contents of the grey case.