OWNING NOTHING AND BEING HAPPY - ON MY OWN TERMS

By now we have all heard the phrase “ You will own nothing and you wil be happy..”

Which is sinister from top-down perspective when it’s a bunch of old white men telling you this..though from bottoms up, if that truly is my personal choice then it’s totally acceptable and liberating, right?

Freedom to choose is the difference..

I chose to disconnect from the superficial chains of capitalism that pushes individuation and ownership, in my teens. When most teens were adding more layers I was stripping them off.

Through my many surrogate Lebanese mothers raising me in the hedonistic capitalistic overload that Sydney was, I learnt at a young age that we don't every truly own anything; even our family members.

5 years after my mother died, I changed high schools to one more local and ethnic, and swiftly made friends with a likeminded rebellious teen who was 1 of 4 sisters and with parents who still loved each other. A good family unit. Within weeks of me knowing her, on a night I wasn't sleeping over, she lost her youngest sister and her family home in a house fire - overnight, just like that.

Subsequently my own sense of displacement, diaspora and feelings of grief arose rapidly and bonded us deeply. As I witnessed the aftermath of this tragic event, what I was left with was a deeper hole in my heart, a stronger sense of impermanence and that life always returns us right back down to the ashes we came from.

I know that Mama Earth is all that holds us in these times, and the knowing in our own bodies, hearts and minds that this experience will shape us and allow us to be more present to all that is fleeting and impermanent. Through a future lens.

Looking back now this was a tangible example of the truth that we come with nothing and we leave with nothing and everything that we own and do in between is fleeting. Through the lens of Impermanence that the Buddhists profoundly teach on. Have had many more examples of the illusion of ownership, mainly through death of my parents and a thousand mini deaths in between.

I now no longer own a car, a prestigious well-paying job, a desire to own a home, a glamorous wardrobe. In fact the only fucken thing I wish to own before my final dream in this incarnation is the ability to fully BE in my own body and feel at home in it.

Homecoming to the only home -that while I am still Mary- should fully occupy and take up space in.

I am very aware of how capitalism and patriarchy together, coagulated to serve under the Godfather - the original sin- of Colonialism has vowed to have me forever disassociate, dismembered, forgetting and fucking my own body to serve the sick strangled system that owns me. US.

So I continue to say NO to it all NOW. Especially to top down Governance of our bodies, claiming for the Greater Good, co-opting and using the same language WE the people; activists, artists and community builders use from the bottom up - to seem like they are in alignment with us. No, I see through this and have from day one. I do not consent.

Nature and this village of mountains, desert and sea regularly reminds me to come home to my body through sensations, impulses, feelings, to follow my instinct from below; my intuition from above and mostly ignore the intellect in between as domineering representation of 'civilisation' that has always been barbaric and bullshit. To trust the body over the mind is a radical act. Which is why globally they have us all moving into cities, from China to US to Australia, to sever our links to nature and our nature, in the city so that we feel less and can be controlled more AND own nothing but our deluded yet mesmerising ‘homes’ in the Metaverse.

Yes I own nothing - but my body. When this is truly EMBODIED - in our collective humanity body - then yes I will be happy - we will be happy. And FREE.

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