What is Mine… She Asked

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“There’s never a man looked me between the eyes and seen a good day a’terward” – Long John Silver”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

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What do you value?

What’s the treasure of your heart’s desire?

Is it something that belongs to you or is it something which belongs to someone else which you would like to be yours?

Is it a place, a thing, an ability, a cause, a person or part of a person, such as their heart, which you wish to own, call yours… mine, mine, mine?

Are you certain you want it as much as you think and feel that you do, or is it the chase after it, the as yet unrequited love,  which is worth more than the goal itself?

What will happen once you own it?

Will you put it somewhere safe, lock it away so no one else can touch it, and guard it, never daring to stray far from it… a prisoner of your prize.

What is truly your most prized possession?

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“And altogether I paid pretty dear for my monthly fourpenny piece, in the shape of these abominable fancies.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

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The more you prize it, the more it will be precious, not just to you but to all those who know that you are trying to keep something as yours and yours alone. Something worth that much of your time, effort, heart and soul, something you hide, keep secret, private, must be of inestimable value… others will want it, to take what you have away from you. They want your precious to be their precious!

They say that possession is nine-tenths of the law. In other words, if you have something in your possession it’s yours whether it is yours or not, and someone else will have to prove to others who have a say in such matters that it’s not yours. Even then, you’ve still got it and you may decide to die rather than ever give it up whatever the law and others say… that the law says, and so say all of us, so give it up!

Depends on what this possession is and how much you and/or others value it as to how things pan out.

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“Fifteen men on the Dead Man’s Chest Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil had done for the rest Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

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I recall being told a long time ago that if you want to be admired and desired, if you want others to value you, see you as being worth something and therefore worth having, to inspire their lust, greed, envy, covetousness, payment in the form of admiring attention, and possible pursuit of you as an object of desire, a trophy to be won, you should already be taken – owned by someone else, because those who are most sought after are those who are already in a relationship.

The very fact that someone else loves you, makes other people decide that they love you too.

As disturbing and confusing as this piece of information which someone imparted to me, gave away for free… hmmmm… was, and as much as I didn’t want it once I had it because I did not know what to do with it, or at least how to use its wisdom, if wisdom it be… there was truth in it which has haunted me ever since.

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“How that personage haunted my dreams, I need scarcely tell you.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

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Haunted my every step as though taunting me. Beware of what you value, be aware of thieves who seek out your values and try to corrupt them, who want what you have… until they have it.

If you love someone or something, set it free… lest it become a bird in a gilded cage, its song never to be sung again as such a sound drives everyone who hears it insane… or in sane, which isn’t worth much in the land of those crazed by desire.

It’s as though everyone is waiting for someone else to make the first move, to find and dig up the buried treasure so that everyone knows there is treasure there, to ‘Like’ something or someone before anyone else wants it and ‘Likes’ it too.

Do these timid souls not know their own hearts? Why do they need someone else’s heart to guide them to treasure?

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“That was Flint’s treasure that we had come so far to seek, and that had cost already the lives of seventeen men from the Hispaniola. How many it had cost in the ammassing, what blood and sorrow, what good ships scuttled on the deep, what brave men walking the plank blindfold, what shot of cannon, what shame and lies and cruelty, perhaps no man alive could tell.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

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Why do we need someone else to tell us what to desire, to value, to ‘Like’, to love, to want, to need, to pursue… surely that information should come from within us, not from outside of us…

Surely no one needs to tell us to support a cause, such as saving the planet on which we all live and depend for our living.

And yet… perhaps there’s a reason why we all wait for someone else to go first, and let us know that it’s safe to pursue a dream, a cause, a treasure…

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 We’re a funny old bunch of mix and match…

We start off wanting nothing more than to be welcomed here by those who invited us to this party on Earth. Just a bit of love, some grub, some care, some nurturing… and we’re happy.

But as we get acquainted with this strange place where we have landed and now must live, as we get to know those in our social environment, we begin to be dissatisfied with just a bit of this and that… we want more. Mostly because the bits we get are never enough to sate our hunger… or are they and do we learn that they are not, adopt the creed of the people around us, absorb the thirst from those who’ve been here a while and pass their parched wound onto us.

We didn’t know we lacked anything until their belief in lack and the accompanying fears of not having infected us like a virus.

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“Then it was that there came into my head the first of the mad notions that contributed so much to saving our lives.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

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They say that those who have everything are poorer than those who have nothing. They also tell us to never settle for anything less than that which we deserve. They tell us to want more, to buy, beg, borrow, steal to get it. They then tell us we’re bad for doing that. They tell us to be greedy, then chastise us for being greedy…

‘They’ say a lot of things… but who are ‘they’?

Are ‘they’ us?

Perhaps…

Possession is not just about things, it’s also about the stuff of dreams, hopes, fears, longings, and botherings. Sometimes they are heirlooms passed down from generation to generation, a cause to fight that travels along the spirals of ancestry, genetics, blood poured into body after body, chasing the dragon’s tail.

Our greatest treasures are those of the imagination, so hard to capture, mirages in the distance, beckoning us forward in pursuit of the ever elusive magical thinking… evolution in our DNA.

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“Seaward ho! Hang the treasure! It’s the glory of the sea that has turned my head.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

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Our dreams born of theirs, passed on…

Our quest emerging from the mud…

Passing it on from human to human… love this, love that, hunt it down and gather it, bring it back, throw it away, go after more and more and more…

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