Property

Seeing that this Question began with that realisation on the walk to John O’Groats in 2003 (will find the place name and give this idea a name).

The gentleman had the most wonderful mansion and gardens. It was heaven on Earth. Yet unexpectedly after 30minutes walking it was just a tiny spec of green dwarfed by the vast expanse of land, sea and sky. It was then that I realised that altho he was in a wonderful place as far as his eyes could see, as far as he could see was a prison that cut off the outside world. Me on the other hand because I refused to have a wall around me had the indescribable vastness of the unlimited world at my feet. It was not that one was better than the other more that they are incomparable. You cannot easily or logically get the complement of “property thinking” just as those who are used to the wandering life cannot easily complement the infinite to find the concept of property and boundary. I didn’t realise what an impact this idea has had.

This thought came from another contemplation about yesterday which is also linked to ego. After a year of preparations the wedding has evaporated. There is almost nothing left just the certificates, myself and the others as witnesses and some photos. From an egotistical point of view however all this was to create an objectivity to my friend’s relationship with his partner. They now have this but everyone else has nothing. It is impossible to complement the “nothing” that we have to get an insight of the relationship. Likewise they in that sealed relationship cannot logically deduce the emptiness of those who were not married. There are many other ways to think about this I’m just focusing on this dialectic.

Now I see that my attitude to life is becoming exactly this. I have much at my finger tips right now but I am to resist building a wall around anything to call it “my own” seeking to exist outside boundaries. Now it doesn’t mean I can’t wander over the territory inside the wall but I am to ignore walls rather than use them. Problem is that the walls actually create the landscape through which we wander in “human” existence. The human world we talk about is constructed in walls.

My mistake I think is to follow the walking analogy too absolutely. What happened after wandering through this mans gardens was that he told me I shouldn’t be there. This is what created the sense of finitude and infinite after I had wandered out of the gardens. For a true wandered a wall is like a mountain just hard to walk over. For the rest of us it “represents” a boundary which is harder to get over than just the physical wall. My problem is that I am trying to stay out of all walls which is hard in a human world where everything has a name and a place. Anyway this is the direction it seems things are going and so relationships, contracts and jobs etc are impossible.

Interesting I see that my friends children 2 and 3 year are so innately property oriented. They organise things according to a world view with them at the centre. Maybe this is just a cultural or linguistic effect or maybe it is a necessary stage that the mind must pass through in order to understand the notion of separatedness and togetherness. Either way I find it very boring to play with them on this level knowing that these games are going nowhere.