I was walking along and suddenly got to thinking back on something strange I had seen a few years before: I was at a construction site, filled with tools and equipment, and near the center of the room was a ladder that had a post-it-note securely taped to it. The note, written in big black marker read, “Mine not yours.”

I assume the owner of the ladder had put up the note to let others know the ladder was his/hers. But, ironically, the message made it sound like the ladder belongs to any reader who reads the note. After all, when I read, ‘mine not yours’, I do so from my own perspective;  the voice in my head thinks of itself as the ‘me’ not the ‘you’.  If ownership is something that requires my or your perspective, then is it something universal? Is it capital T true?

Can a note  keep the ladder ‘faithful’ and prevent it from allowing itself to be used by someone else? Can it keep the ladder from ‘walking away’, being taken by some other worker? Can it keep the ladder from falling or breaking or losing structural integrity? The note actually tells the real truth: if my ladder, my belongings, obeyed me they wouldn’t need a note in the first place.  What is mine would act like it was mine and it would be plain for all the world to see.

Instead, a ladder, like all objects, has a ‘life of its own’. It is a combination of parts, it has a moment in time (birth) at which all those parts come together, it has a period where –like Shed– it maintains its ladder function and form (life), and ultimately it will come apart, erode, decompose, break, i.e. die. While it exists, the ladder has ‘rules of its own’, ways it can be used, limits to its function and strength and structure. Ownership can’t change any of this, and the concept of mine-ness, born from my perspective, oblivious to the reality of the object is as flimsy as the sticky note it was written on.