Back when I was a teenager, I refused to wear control top pantyhose when I had to go to an event, I felt like sporting the slimming-squishing-tummy-effect was fraudulent somehow. It was a cheat, not my body. I felt like because the effect was temporary, I shouldn’t try and pass it off as mine. That is the first time I can clearly remember the use of ‘the formula’ in my life: temporary = not mine.

Fast-forward 30ish years: I was in the Uber coming from SFO on my first work trip back to San Francisco. I was scheduled to be around for a few weeks. Back when I used to live in SF, leaving the airport felt like coming home. But now, that same trip felt like a prelude to something temporary. As I crawled into bed that night, I looked around the room — white sheets, white walls, white furniture — everything felt so impersonal, so different than my old, colorful Victorian home that sat, filled with a new owner and a new owner’s stuff, just a few miles away. Here, everything around me seemed to shout, “temporary, not yours.”

Of course, I had noticed this equation (temporary = not mine) before. When I would travel I knew the hotel rooms, the airbnbs, the villas, the apartments,  were all not mine. I knew, without a doubt that I checked-in, used the space for a time, and would check back out again. No matter how nice, or how crappy, the place was, I never got attached. I knew I would leave soon. It was temporary and therefore not mine.

I remember a particular road trip — 5 days driving from Orlando, along the Florida coast, till I got to Miami to visit my family. Eric and I decided to rent a fancy car, a little Corvette convertible,  for our trip. Pulling into a service station, the folks next to us rolled down heir window and shouted ,”Nice Ride!” With my mouth, I thanked them, but in my head a little voice refused the compliment, it said, “5 day road trip, temporary rental, not mine” and the compliment failed to puff my ego at all. Of course, had it been MY PORSCHE, I’m sure I would have felt differently.

When I lived in San Francisco, I was so sure the city was mine. The house was mine. The job was mine. The life was mine. But here I am, back again, and suddenly it is clear that they were all temporary. My time living in the city was temporary. My visit back is temporary too. The only difference is duration.  Actually, the real difference is the way my mind chooses to interpret duration.

But, if impermanence is the master of this world, then the real truth is that everything is temporary. If everything is temporary, what can really be mine? How long will I continue to fool myself with the flimsy, arbitrary, justification of duration?