My car had to go  to the garage for servicing so the garage offered to let me borrow one of their loaner cars until mine was ready for pickup. I gave them a credit card, I signed the paperwork, I took the keys and before I knew it I was cruising down highway 101 on my way back home. The car I borrowed was the same make as my own and I noticed quite quickly how easy it was to get used to; all the buttons and signals on the dashboard looked just like the ones in my car, it had all the same features, the seats felt the same, the car performed the same,  it was just like my car and yet … despite all the similarities, the rental car just didn’t feel like mine in my heart. For this Dharma practitioner an obvious question popped into my head — WHY?? And so I began, by process of elimination, to reason through exactly why I felt so differently about my car and a rental.

Its not the function — My car was broken, the rental worked fine. The rental was what was letting me get home, move around town, go on with my life. It was serving me.  Meanwhile my own car was miles away, useless to me. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that mine was mine and the rental was theirs.

Its not the duration — I knew full well I was only going to be driving the rental for a few days at most. Perhaps it was duration that made it seem less minely…but I considered dresses I had bought to wear just  once, to a gala or special occasion, with the full intention to consign or  give them away right afterwards. These were clothes that were with me for only a few short days and yet when I bought them, while I wore them, when I looked at post event pictures, the dresses felt like mine. Mine is clearly not about time…

It doesn’t live in the object – Clearly I know that ‘minenss’ can’t live in an object; its not like when they take apart the car at the garage they are going to find that little part that is the origin of mine. I had stayed in a hotel recently and someone had accidentally barged into the room we were staying in, I felt so violated, like my space, my room was invaded. And yet, when I checked-out and saw the maid going to clean the room I felt nothing at all.  Same room, but no longer mine, so mine wasn’t in the space. Perhaps though it was in the expectation, the norm …

Its not about social norms — Ah, but everyone knows a rental is a rental and what you buy is yours, maybe mine is in what is the accepted consensus, what is normal. Only just the other day I had been in a coffee shop when a guy left without his hat. He didn’t return for a few minutes so someone else walked-up, grabbed the hat, and said “mine now”. I remember thinking that what he did was stealing, the hat wasn’t his, but he thought it was, he said it was, he walked away with it. If ‘mine’ were somehow a norm it would be well, normal and agreed upon. The truth there are wars over territory different people think of as ‘theirs’, there are divorces and patent disputes and  countless cases where mine isn’t clear, its not agreed upon as a social norms, it depends entirely on the perspective of the claimant. Which brings me to…

Its all in my head — I got to thinking back to a  recent contemplation on smoking where I saw so clearly that my beliefs around the acceptability of smoking in public came down to me, what I wanted, what I believed. Back when I smoked I thought smoking in public was a right, after all the space was public. After I quit and got asthma, I started thinking smoking in public is wrong because the space is public and smoking interferes with people’s ability to share and enjoy the space. The point here is — I make-up the criteria about smoking, about standards. Maybe, just maybe, I am the one that makes up the criteria for mineness as well… after all, its not the function, the duration, the object, the legality or the norm: What else is there really except for what I believe?

I think that hunk of metal, uselessly sitting in a shop out there is mine. I think it exists to do my bidding (ironic since it is in the shop broken) to keep me safe, to get me around in style. I think that it reflects me, that it  proves something about me –its a Porsche after all– it proves I am a Porsche owner, that I did it, I deserve it, it is an extension of me. But I just can’t feel that way about a rental, it proves nothing other than that I rented a car, so it is not mine, my mind just can’t go through the mental gymnastics it takes to  ‘mine-ify’ the rental. But 2 cars, functionally the same — is it possible for 1 of them to make me a thing, to become my thing, when the other cannot?