A few days after the contemplations in the preceding blog later I was thinking further on this idea of ‘as I see fit’ and more broadly on the way I come to the conclusion that something is mine. What is the evidence I use, and what it is I am trying to accomplish, with all this mineness?

Of course, in one way, there is just the basic: I like what I like and I want to claim and keep what I find pleasurable. But my claims often run much deeper than that, I often claim stuff not because I want it to help make the world as I see fit, I want it to help make me –my identity—as I see fit.

Objects like cloths and decor, these are things I lean on to make ‘my environment’ as I see fit. To help me segment the world into all that stuff outside that is beyond my care and control, and those spaces like my home and my body that I claim as mine.

Deeper still though is the objects that I depend on to make myself, my identity, as I see fit. I had started thinking about my cat, Tara, a stray I ‘rescued’ when she walked into my home and wouldn’t leave. At the time, I thought I was doing her a favor, turning a street cat into a house cat. I had taken her to the vet, learned she was diabetic, I couldn’t just let her roam outside, eat anything she wanted and not be home for insulin shots every 12 hours. But that cat used to howl at the door, was clearly agitated inside, didn’t even live much longer since it turned out the diabetes was a result of swift moving pancreatic cancer. She lived her last days locked-up crying for the outdoors.

Now when I reflect on it, I realize I had used that cat to confirm myself, to prove how compassionate I was taking in a stray. Keeping her ‘safe’, was really my way of using her to make me as I see fit.  It never dawned on me to think about the cat and her needs at all, I was too busy using her for my own identity building needs. Taking in strays is perfect proof of compassionate alanas.  Once she walked into my home, she became part of my family and like the mothers and husbands in that tribe that circumcised girls, I was impervious to the karmic consequences, the harms caused by my claim.

How could I not be? The ‘mineness’ of this stray cat, that I randomly adopted, that shortly thereafter died, that clearly didn’t agree with the lifestyle I saw as fit for her, was so obvious to me I never even questioned it. Even though, as I write, the absurdity of this clear-as-day-claim becomes more and more obvious. Alas, I am blinded by conventions, by sammuti, that I hold as gospel truth.  

I was watching an episode of True Bloods, there is a scene Tommy’s mom tells Tommy that his newly found brother Sam (who was given up for adoption before Tommy was born) may be blood, but he is not family. Of course, on some level, I understood what she was saying right away. Sam, a virtual stranger, is not his, at least not the same way as his mom and dad, who raised him his whole life are. But thinking more about it, I started wondering what it really meant. What do we mean by mine: Are there firm and fixed criteria –like the time spent with someone/ something, the signing of contracts, the exchange of currency, simply never knowing it to have been a different way? What is at the heart of this claim besides our own self-interest and self-delusion?

Maybe it is that mine, my clothes, my family, are the things I can depended on. Of course that’s not true at all: Tommy’s parents were not dependable; they gave up one son to adoption and regularly neglected the other one. I mean honestly, even an amazing parent like my dad, or a partner like Eric –the best most dotting family members – can just die and not be there when you need them. Just because we claim something it doesn’t mean it is dependable.

Tommy ‘s parents actually pimp him out; they force him into illegal fights for money. They do this, despite the pain and the dangers, because he belongs to them and they can use him as they see fit. Despite this, Tommy stays with them, earns money for the family, so it can’t be that ‘mine’ is what acts in my interest, or treats me well.

So why does Tommy stay with those parents? Because those parents make him see himself, his identity, “good son” as he sees fit. He takes care of them because despite how terrible they have been to him, they are his parents, his responsibility, they are his burden to bear, this is the sammuti Tommy is convinced by. In the end,  the state of his parent, their happiness/safety/opinions/etc. reflect on how he sees himself, how he truly believes the world to be,  so he continues heading to the fighting ring to support them.

As a child my mother abused and neglected me. As a young adult, she tried to sabotage my reputation and relationships. As I aged, she was a source of stress and strain. Still, I have dutifully stayed engaged with her, suffering her vocal dissatisfaction at my many shortcomings, at the fact that what I do is rarely enough to satisfy her. I strive to be a good daughter, I ache when over and over I am given the feedback my efforts are not enough.  And because of her nature, her hunger, she regularly lets me know they are not enough. Why do I stay in this dynamic? Because she is my mom, my responsibility, being a good daughter is the identity I see as fit. I stay because in my mind I am tethered to her, she has been with me since birth, she is the only mother I know, and mother/daughter means something to me .

I think, to some degree, proximity, what we are used to, fools us. Sam after all is less family to Tommy than his parents are, but the biological connection is the same. The identity, the mineness, is forged at least in part by familiarity, by what someone already believes is true. I remember this family, we have been together X number of years, clearly they are my family (duhhh), so they are more mine, more significant than a new brother. Just the fact that I am used to these people, these relationships, I take then a fact, makes them more potent somehow.

Mae Neecha talks about this dynamic her autobiography — its not that what we are used to is better, it’s just the very act of being used to it makes it preferable for us. Makes it comfortable. Sheer proximity, time with something, it begins to fool me into thinking ‘mine’. It begins to become incorporated into my imaginary future. I begin to identify with it, can’t see life without it. Become worried about it, overly concerned, obsessed with preserving –it is a part of my story now, the future I want for myself. Fooled. Just like the sign at the spa ‘fooled’ me into believing reality was, was supposed to be a certain way –silent. I read signs of all over the place – my name is on the deed, I paid for this, I was born of this womb, I can sense the pain and pleasure in this body, I had a wedding ceremony — as proof that shit is mine. Will act as I see fit. So many signs, all equally meaningless because in the end, no ‘sign’ subverts the nature of each claimed object to shift according to its causes and conditions, decay, break, die.