Mackenzie on "Me and Mine"

This past weekend we were bussed off to a human rights weekend. I hate to say this now, but me and many of my housemates were not thrilled. We knew little details about the weekend, and I think this is what aggravated us most. We were fearful of the unknown, wanting to know what we would be doing and more so WHY. I now reflect on these thoughts and feel like a jerk. We arrived on an olive farm, and I can say with confidence that simply because we were surrounded by such beauty that I was in good spirits most of the weekend. We were in the middle of nowhere, a long drive away from shops and things of that sort. All you could see for miles was spacious farms and a mountain behind us.  All this beauty allowed me to be in my own skin, and it was the first time I’ve felt that way in a while. We also had the pleasure of working with about 20 people (most older than us) that lived in South Africa. Many were from other countries such as Congo, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Tanzania to name a few. All of this new interaction with these unfamiliar people led me to realize how close I am with my housemates – and I enjoyed that realization. On the second day of our human rights weekend, we were divided into four teams and each team had to chose a country in Africa to represent. We then were presented with a situation – overpopulation had caused all the countries to flee to a new planet. On this new planet – only 1/3 had natural resources. One of the countries (Egypt) had landed in this area, so you can imagine the stress put upon them as they created new rules and rights for themselves. We all gathered after reflecting on our situation, and an argument arose of how this new planet would operate. Egypt felt that because they had landed in this area, they had to make certain rules and that in a way was theirs. A dispute arose, and it led many people – including myself – to question what exactly entitles one to call something “mine”.

While some of our wars on this earth have been fought for justice and things that are relatively real concepts – many of them have been fought over possessions. Land, oil, money, lives, etc. I’m beginning to think that many problems that exist in life are due to this thought of me and mine. As I’ve said before in a previous blog, I am very interested in the study of yoga, meditation, and the Buddhist culture. A lot of what I study is about the illusion of the me and mine. We hold on so tightly to our possessions, our thoughts, our emotions, our identities, the stories we’ve created about ourselves – our lives REVOLVE around what we consider to be “mine”. The fact is – we are not permanent. The body, thoughts, emotions, cars, friends will not stay ours forever. We will, at some point, have the same fate as every other life and that is death. The superficial life we once had will come to an end. So how can we say ever that any of these things are truly ours? We create a lot more problems for ourselves when we develop this idea. Because when we lose these things or something changes – we suffer. We experience a “loss”. But the truth is that life is full of losing. It is full of loss and gains. But you cannot have one without the other.

Nothing is permanent. And nothing is truly “mine”.  We spend our lives defending, trying to keep what is “mine” and we hurt others in doing so. What is “mine” becomes more important than being compassionate. It becomes more important than peace or happiness. You can easily see this in our world today - we begin wars because we think oil in another country is OURS. In the past, we fought over land and who arrived there first. Why is it that just because one arrives somewhere first it is their land? How about that the fact that the air, water, land, etc on this earth is actually everyone’s. Or in the true sense – it is NOONES. In that case, we should be citizens of the world. The division of the earth on a large scale represents the division we create between ourselves and others on a daily basis.

We try to keep people out and we think that simply because we were somewhere first or because something has fallen into our lap that it is ours. We have moved so far away from cooperation. It is the last goal in our minds and it should be the first. We have all taken defense in life and because of that we live in constant fear. We live in constant fear of losing our things, of being wrong, of death. So I think it is important for everyone to contemplate the fact that nothing in this life is yours, it never was to begin with. I think it would be nice to stop living in so much fear, but that’s just me.