The Borrowers Economy
The paradox of our time is that we live to consume and own, yet none of these things we possess can be taken with us.
The sad reality is that in this life all that is certain is taxation and death. Everything else is borrowed. The space we own or frequent and the time we utilise is not ours to own, only to rent.
This whole life is a beautiful flow of giving and receiving. Receiving the gift of life, yet eventually giving it back to others, or back to mother nature.
When we leave this reality, everything that we are and were is returned to its rightful owner. We are simply renters of time, space, and property. Nothing is ever truly ours, we only really borrow it for a short period of time.
In my life, all I have ever wanted was stuff.
I could plan 5,10 or even 20 years ahead and tell you where I wanted to be, what I wanted to own and how much money I wanted to be worth. It was reassuring to have some sense of stability in my future.
A sense of ownership and control.
The consumeristic capitalistic world we live in is a great reminder of the chase. We are all rushing to the next iPhone, new car or the bigger house.
Those days of desire without logical reason are diminishing. The days of yearning and craving and wanting have turned into accepting, having and being. I’m no longer urgently pursuing or planning for material possessions, but rather just accepting and appreciating all that is now.
Life is exceptionally fragile and short, and in the very short 30 years of life that I’ve experienced, I understand that we merely represent only a fraction of this existence. We come and go, like a distant memory, and some of us are able to leave remnants of our beings behind, through purpose, or accomplishment.
From the moment we enter this world we are bombarded with signals and messages that overwhelm all of our five senses, and as we begin to process the world around us we are robbed of our attention. Everything around us demands our attention, and they don’t stop until we do.
Despite the relative insignificance, we cling to material goods and messages — buying whatever can afford in order to stay relevant to our peers and societal norms. These messages, plastered on billboards, sign-posts, instagram, and everywhere we look, telling us to buy, own, and consume.
Society has built meaning around the significance of ownership.
Buying and owning a residence, starting a family, having a mortgage, owning a relatively new vehicle is so important in keeping up with the Jones’ and being a ‘part’ of this society. Anything outside of that falls to the wayside and is redundant.
The reality is, “ownership is a figment of our capitalistic imaginations” and in this economy, it is very easy to be pulled into a trap of expectations.
We are temporary custodians — holders of physical objects that we lug around as accessories and extensions of who we are. We fill empty spaces, warehouses, storage facilities and entire homes with stuff that is meaningless and useless. But, just like us, everything has a useful life, and although somethings holding value and meaning such as a heirloom, the rest is simply just baggage. Our most prized possessions will either transfer or perish.
Resisting the status quo means standing against the rest of humanity; a resister to the normality of life and it’s natural progression from birth to death. You have to be a naysayer, critical thinker, and a contrarian to popular belief.
We are renters of space and time. Our life is not ours to destroy, abuse, love, and cherish. We share this rent with everyone around us. We are co-sharing, and co-owning this fragmented reality until we move on to our next conquest of the unknown. Thinking of someone? They are renting space in your mind, borrowing your thoughts — rent free.
Simplify.
There is more to life than consuming, owning, and having. The competitive nature of comparison leads us to out-buy our neighbour, or out-drive our best friend, but who the fuck really cares? Nobody. Those who think they do simply live by the materialistic laws of the universe, governed by the third dimension of physicality.
When we learn to detach from everyone and everything, we learn that we own nothing, and nothing owns us. We begin to respond and respect every physical form of existence around us — from the particles in the water, to the person you’re in love with.
Marriage is just a decision to rent each others time for the rest of our lives, co-creating to share this rented time and space with those around us, and eventually passing on all those physical goods we owned to our heritage; our children — the co-renters of our lives.
In the form of human capital, we, as humans, sell our time to the highest bidder in exchange for a physical and typically monetary good. In exchange for that, we use these monetary goods to rent an object, experience or time from somebody else — thus creating an ever-looping experience of buying and selling borrowed time.
Life is about living in the moment.
Living for the experiences.
Living for the true gift of life — the present.
We are so busy consuming, borrowing, and renting, that we forget to live. We think we have all the time in the world, but we don’t own any of it, and when we rent what little time we have to others, we are left with nothing but the monetary rewards and physical goods — a meaningless exchange.
Time is finite — we will never get it back, yet we live in a world where we are so quick to sell it. One, because we have no choice — society breeds this way of life, and two, because we are so unaware of what is really happening that we get lost and transcended in this life of doing, buying, selling and consuming — An unfortunate tragedy.
