You Keep Nothing

“The desire for a lasting external security is uppermost, revealing itself in the endless pursuit of health, happiness, possessions and so on, defense of what has been acquired being the obsessive idea, and yet no real defense being possible, because one cannot defend what is undefendable.” —Henry Miller

We all know that ownership is illusion, that material possessions are loaners. Eventually they crumble, or we do. When I didn’t ‘own’ anything I truly valued—which wasn’t so long ago—it didn’t matter. Now that I have possessions that mean something to me—a house from which I’m currently looking at Pikes Peak, an Alvin Gil-Tapia at the top of the stairs, a signed and numbered Ed Mell in the hall, a pair of John Meister oils hanging in the living room—it’s harder to accept.

But as Henry Miller points out, trying to secure any possession is futile business. Ah, but the enlightened among us prize the jewels of the mind, an active and vivid interior world: collecting wisdom, cultivating a way of life, refining a point of view, honing an aesthetic, embodying an approach. Right?

So it’s bitter indeed to realize that all those non-material treasures are possessions too, that knowledge, wisdom, memory—all of it—frays.

Equally applicable to the body, of course. All the strength I work for in the gym? It’s temporary gain destined to leave at some point.

Our lives are loaners. We are renters by nature.