In order to enjoy there is no need to own

We do not have a problem to share happiness with others over the fine weather and sunshine. This is the moment when a large number of people are enjoying the same activity or thoughts without anyone feeling mutilated or wounded. We all share one and the same object and there is no sense to any reasonable person to own the sun and deny everyone else to enjoy it. Similarly, we do not want anyone to deny us the enjoyment of the common thoughts or joy over the same things. On the contrary, we are happy if someone thinks or feels the same way we do.

The best things in life are shared

The greatest part of things in our lives we share with others. A part of life that belongs only to us is almost non-existent compared to what we share with others. The Earth's surface area is 510 million square kilometers, but what really belongs to us may only be a 50 square meters of apartment space, which is 100 trillion times less than the Earth's surface.

When we visit Paris, for example, we do not want to own the Paris. When we go to the seaside with friends, we do not wish that the sea would only belong to us. When we breathe fresh air in the woods, then we do not think that the forest should belong to us. We can do it all by sharing and enjoying at the same time. Despite the fact that we share so many things in our lives, we can still enjoy it all, which shows that the holding is not the root of enjoyment and happiness.

To be happy is not necessarily to possess, it is sufficient if we can use something and share it without compromising. If we see that someone has thrown garbage into the sea, air pollution obscured the sun or someone burned the forest, it makes us unhappy. If someone damages something we all can enjoy together, it touches us all. It would feel like someone took the right to prohibit any other common enjoyment of something from you. The same principle also works with the possession - it is not the right to use something, it is the right to prohibit it to others.

It is not the possession that makes us happy, because we are created to be happy since our birth. This is the destruction of the shared values that make us unhappy because someone has taken happiness from us that we are born with. And in order to compensate this, we are given the opportunity to buy things that are made from raw materials of this globe, and think that it will make us happy in the end.

We are sad to see when a forest is cut down, but we forget this the moment we can buy something in the store that is made from the same wood that was cut off. Do we actually get happier by this is difficult to assess, because people are different. But for the forest it does not change a thing, because it has already been cut down. If you want something, you should think whether it is perhaps possible that you want it because somebody else out there has it and you do not want to feel unequally. In this case you should ask yourself, why is someone else's life more important or more worthy that you should live your life according to them.

What can be possessed

The Earth is more than 4 billion years old, the modern man has existed on Earth about 200,000 years. How can someone who has existed on this planet for only a moment and will probably die out long before the disappearance of the planet, say that something on this planet belongs to them. Man belongs to the planet rather than vice versa, because the time of ones life and existence is only a momentary compared to the planet itself.

The plot, which we have today, was here for millions of years before us and will remain in the same place long after our death. The fact that we own something on this planet is just an illusion - it is like a backyard ants in an anthill agree together that the anthill belongs only to them. Nature does not allow people to make agreements with it, it is just an agreement between the people and applies just as much as an agreement is currently worth.

Wars have shown that often agreements do not cost anything. Otherwise, the country boundaries would have remained unchanged since the first nations and frontiers emerged. The essence of who owns what depends purely on the strength of an agreement at the given moment. An earthquake or flood do not ask from a person to whom one or another part of the house or a plot of land belongs, because we are part of nature not the other way around.

Owning has a negative tinge

Owning something means to withdraw it from all the others. To hold, it must first be appropriated. Word of ownership, however, has a violent and negative shade. Noone knows the people that like it when a big country wants to invade their country. But in order to assimilate it must first take away the rights from others.

One might think that how owning a car, for example, can negatively affect the other people. But think, this car is made from the raw material of our shared planet and pollutes the air we all breathe together. Car existence can only benefit the owner of the car, but the losses that come with it are familiar to all the other people too. If the city is covered with pollution from large industries or vehicles and the sunlight is completely overshadowed by it, the benefits and the damage ratio is consequently totally unequal, because those who are not directly involved in the factories or vehicles suffer as well.

Everything can be shared

The preceding reasoning suggests that maybe it is not the possession that makes us happy, but the current distribution is the one that makes us unhappy. If you buy something think about whether you actually need it, because in the end, it will not make anyone happy if we all sit in our homes at the top of a bunch of things. Better call a friend and go out for a walk - enjoy a common, share some beautiful thoughts and faith in a better future.

All people may not understand this way of thinking and still believe that possession is happiness. Similarly, some states will not be able to understand that all the rest of the people want to live in peace, they still need to wage war and conquer. But do all these wars and the huge frenzy of owning make someone ultimately happy? Probably not.

Last update: 2014-04-03 (Y,M,D)

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