I have never understood the reason why the human race has a neurotic need to possess, and be possessed.
Perhaps we have always been like this, so desperate to possess, so desperate to belong.
I personally have felt that a need to possess or to belong, but it seems that that need has been elevated to unnatural extremes in modern day society.
People are still fighting over land, the way that the Greeks, Romans, the Persians, Arabs, Egyptians, and Aztecs did in the times before us.
We still have this compelling need to hold command over large areas of land, and the reasoning behind it has little to do with sustaining our population, religion and our culture.
It has more to do with power, with having resources and things that can give one leverage over others, that can give one control.
It’s got to with all the things that breed and manifest selfishness in the minds of men.
We devour resources at astonishing rates, and waste plenty, kill heartlessly, and care less and less for those who suffer for our greed.
We are motivated to practice philanthropy when benefits us in some way, not out of love of giving simply to give.
Our relationship with wealth is the same way. Everyone you know wants to be a billionaire. Wants to possess money and a lifestyle that they believe they are entitled to. Perhaps they do, perhaps they do not.
That is not the issue. What is the issue is that we often want to have more than we actually need to survive, and resent or refuse to understand the innate selfishness within that.
The destructive need to possess. We refuse to recognize the destructive nature of our dreams, and how this nature has turned them into nightmares for others around us.
We even are consumed with the need to possess things that we shouldn’t worry about holding onto so desperately, like the love, approval and envy of the people around us. I have often heard people speak of the “haterz” concept, and to this day it bugs me to no end.
Our need to possess the approval of others has gone to the point that we even have translated their disdain for us into a form of approval and a source of personal pride. What a senseless thing to covet! Why would you covet hatred as proof of people’s admiration for you? Whatever happened to encouraging love within the relationships that we have, and paying no mind to those who seek to spread negativity?
Instead, we have put those who despise us on a pedestal (one that seems to be above those that love us) because our need to possess the supposed power and motivation that comes from their hatred is so important to us.
Our love lives are saturated with the need to control and possess someone else’s love completely. So consumed are we with this need that we attempt to even control the relationships that person has with other people, and the love that they give out into the world. We separate them from the friends they have that we don’t like, the hobbies, opinions, and places where we feel that our possession of their love would lessen.
I’m sure if we could walk around with our lovers blindfolded, handcuffed, mute, and deaf we would to keep them from finding someone else to give their love to. Our fear of this loss of possession fuels illogical feelings of inadequacy, rage, and despair within us. Perhaps I am painting society in its extreme, but perhaps society today is at its extreme.
Society is reaching a perilous point, where our need to possess all that is around us will eventually destroy us.
We need to let go.
Let go of this materialistic need that has grown so fiercely within us. We need to learn to be content, to not cloy, and fight, and scratch and kill in order to possess. It is a beautiful feeling to have when you believe that something belongs to you, but even a butterfly clutched in too tight of a grip will be crushed.
I am not saying we should rid ourselves of our desire to have something belong to us, and to belong to something because it is a vital, natural, part of our identity as a species. Just don’t destroy yourself and everything around you in the process. Let go of all the negative things associated with that desire like the desperation, insecurity, fear, and the selfishness that is part of possessing as brutally as we do.
We have become a waking nightmare suffering from a communal madness. We shall never be at peace so long as grip our lives so desperately. Give, so you do not hold so tightly onto your “possessions”.
Find peace with yourself, so we can all be at peace.
Philippa Hatendi can be reached at phatendi@spartans.ut.edu.