This piece is part of my 2016–2026 archive migration. Some original formatting, content, and external links may be missing, changed, or not be optimized.
Anything that can be prevented, taken away, or coerced is not a person’s own – but those things that can’t be blocked are their own. – Epictetus, Discourses, 3.24.3
“The conservationist Daniel O’Brien has said that he doesn’t “own” his several-thousand-acre buffalo ranch in South Dakota, he just lives there while the bank lets him make mortgage payments on it. It’s a joke about the economic realities of ranching, but it also hints at the idea that land doesn’t belong to one individual, that it will far outlast us and our descendants. Marcus Aurelius used to say that we don’t own anything and that even our lives are held in trust.
We may claw and fight and work to own things, but those things can be taken away in a second. The same goes for others things we like to think are “ours” but are equally precarious: our status, our physical health or strength, our relationship. How can these really be ours if something other than us – fate, bad luck, death, and so on – can dispossess us of them without notice?
So what do we own? Just our lives – and not for long.”
– The Daily Stoic
Poetry: As I Sit On My Grave
What’s On Your Tombstone?
Desires Make You A Servant
When I Die, I Don’t Want A Funeral
The Clarity Death Brings As We Age
Fear Shows You What Matters Most
Their Grass Is Merely A Different Shade Of Green
Question Everything: Who We Are Is Usually Someone Else
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