Ownership

Today's blog is brought to you by the ongoing saga of Mojo, the dog.

We first met Mojo in August when he came to visit our dog, Zeke. After several more visits involving animal control, we adopted Mojo at Christmas. Two months later, his previous owners are demanding him back.

Because the idea of this blog is to practice writing rather than rant about my day-to-day drama, I will ponder on the idea of ownership.

I am often struck by the obsession we have with ownership. I guess it goes along with consumerism. We feel a right to own things. We possess our shelter, our family and our stuff. And the more we own the happier we are. When I lived in a co-op, we were less concerned about ownership. We felt responsible for our children, but were quite willing to share our spaces and our things. We often ate together, shared our social time and homes. Now that I am a home-owner, I realize that I share less and own more.

With ownership comes responsibility. When we own a pet, we accept that if it hurts somebody or eats something or dies, we will have to apologise, replace what was eaten or take the animal to the vet or bury it. If it runs away, we are responsible for locating it.

Ownership has also been brought up with the Olympics. The Canadian program, Own the Podium, was introduced to pump us up about the Vancouver Games. The hype translated into long sough-after funding for athletes through coaching and facilities and I for one am proud that we set out to own the podium. Instead of saying "let's try" we said "let's do it!" Even though it's purely marketing, believing you can do something will get you closer to doing it than wondering if you can.

Because we are primarily focussed on the type of ownership that results from a transaction (i.e. we bought it), we forget about other types of responsibilities. For example the environment. We don't really own it, but we are responsible for it. We don't own each other, but we are all dependent on each other. We often look for an owner when we talk about whose responsible for these larger things. Like who is going to be responsible for Toronto's garbage or for rebuilding Haiti. Who is responsible for the hurricanes, tsunamis, floods. Ironically, we call these acts of God.

A bit of a ramble, but I own it and take full responsibility.