I Don’t Own My Fur Baby
Why I don’t agree with the word “Owner”
If you come to India, you will hear this term a lot. Everyone owns something. Everyone is an owner of either a pet, a house, a TV, a property, a coffee mug, or simply his music collection, a set of CDs. I own so many things, I am an owner.
It's a very normal question that people ask each other back here. Do you own this house or are you on rent? It's as if the sudden impact of the question, throws back a renter, into defense, saying things like, “I own a house in the other end of the city. I am on rent in this one.” And all of a sudden, that was his redemption. His face-saving statement.
On social media, most people are like this dog is lost and the “owners” are looking for him or her. And I am sitting in my living room in one corner of the world, being an obvious tiny little dot on the vast cosmos of the universe, wondering, why humans think they own what they own.
Because I gave some money for it you dummy, comes a small little voice. Fair enough, but does it make me the owner? Do we own anything at all?
I planted around 30 odd trees in my childhood. It was part of my fathers, pet project, of ‘plant more greens’ and I was part of a team that did. Does it make the planters claim the trees as owners? The tree doesn't care who planted it.
In the same way, why do we think we own our pets? Why do we address them as pets at all? They are a life we have to include in our family and call our family. If we think about this, I think a lot of animal abuse comes down. When people get over this mentality of owning things and people and animals and anything they buy as theirs, there is so much hope.
I find hope in detaching myself from an owner mentality. I don’t own anything. Not even my ideas which inspire many people, because somewhere I also got inspired by someone's idea.
Stop “Owning” dogs. Stop “Owning” cats. Stop owning “Horses”. Just stop calling everything you can buy as owning. I think at the most what happened is, for that short while, that life came into your life and gave you a chance to feel loved. You gave and received Love’ and that's what it is.
