The Finiteness of Seemingly Possessive Possessions

We were on vacation for over two weeks, away from our home, on temporary hiatus from our day-to-day lives. And while we were gone the local wildlife moved into our property, seeking to take ownership of that which was ours, trying to take possession.

Possession is 9/10 of the law, right?

The biggest trespassers were a family of raccoons that took up residence under our deck, along with a million tiny black ants that swarmed over the top of said deck.

Both parties simply sought to carve out their own little piece of control and ownership from what was legally mine. They wanted to make my home theirs, to hold and occupy some little space for their own use and possible enjoyment.

I harassed the family of raccoons for two days until they eventually went away. And The Wife poured a gallon of scalding hot water over the swarm of ants to dissuade them. The harassment worked and both parties eventually relinquished their claims to possession on my property and went elsewhere.

But their vacation of my property after my vacation of my property begged a question:

Do we ever truly possess anything? Can we, actually?

Think about it.

Everything has a finite life span, doesn’t it?

Everything eventually breaks down, bites the dust, decays and dies in its ultimate end. And one can never truly possess that which is finite, right? You can have it for a while, but eventually it goes away.
So doesn’t the very idea of mortality nullify the actual concept of possession, the idea that one can ever truly have something to keep forever and ever?

In reality, we are merely borrowing things to use during our lifetime or theirs.

And since everything has a life span, we are only borrowing things until we tire of them or they tire of us, either party giving up the ghost as one of us expires.

We are merely given things in our life to use and enjoy while they are there, in our lives. And the important thing to remember is the impermanence of it all, the fleeting moment that is the lifespan of a disposable spoon or a human being.

Even family heirlooms succumb to this notion, those seemingly precious objects so important to one’s family history that they are specifically handed down from generation to generation. Even those things are fleeting within the impermanence of our lives, and while they will outlive us because we are finite, because we die and move on and leave the heirloom to another generation, they too will eventually go away.

We leave heirlooms to our loved ones in hopes that some part of us will live on through the heirloom.

It is a fleeting attempt at false perpetuity.

Eventually everything goes away.

Everything breaks down and dies away.

That includes your life and mine, your toys and mine, everything you and I will ever love or ever possess, be it people or homes or cars or toys or land. Everything is impermanent. Even the mountains will some day wear away, crumbling into the stones that occasionally erupt out of my yard and allow me to stack them into cairns of temporary yard art.

Everything goes away, no matter how hard we try or wish otherwise.
There are things we lust over; there are people who lust over us. And of all the shiny baubles in the world, we lord over everything as if it were truly ours to have. But it is all so fleeting and desperate and meaningless and hopeless – nobody can truly ever possess anything, no matter how badly you want it.

You’re always just ever borrowing it.

Or it is borrowing you, at best.

In a world of ever fleeting consumerism and constantly upgraded models, where the new always displaces the old, where what you have is never good enough, where more is the norm as we fills the empty spaces of our lives with stuff and people we’ll never truly possess, one is tempted to ask:

What is the point? Why do we constantly chase a fictional pot of gold at the end if the rainbow?

Because we are programmed to, that’s why.

Despite the fact that none of it will ever truly belong to us, despite how much we delude ourselves otherwise, we desperately scramble onward after whatever “it” is.

No matter how much we mend or maintain, repair or restore, in both things or relationships, time eventually takes it all away. It may take one lifetime or many, but Time always wins out.

Entropy always triumphs.

The infinite chaos of degradation is the only real constant. It is a law of physics, of thermodynamics and decay. Everything that was ever made is going away, little by little, cell by cell and atom by atom. It doesn’t matter if it’s a relationship or a mountaintop ranch. In a million years all of it will be gone.

So what is the overriding message to all of this? What is the meaning, if any?

Live in the moment.

Enjoy those things and people that have crossed into your life for as long as they are there.

As the wise ancient Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius said almost two thousand years ago, “Love nothing but that which comes to you woven in the pattern of your destiny.”

Heed the great emperor’s advice.

Appreciate each moment you have with whatever it is you have, or whomever it is that has you.

So what’s the other 1/10 of the law?