Do Not Touch My Stuff
I'm convinced that one of the root causes of evil in the nature of man is the disposition of selfishness. Early thoughts of my childhood ferry in memories of altercations about which toy belongs to whom and adherence to an imaginary line across our car's backseat that acted as a boundary between my area and that of my sister. (If either of us crossed that line with any part of our bodies, that body part was liable to be slapped, squeezed, thumped, bitten, or whacked with a foreign object. And you couldn't really voice a valid complaint about it...you had crossed the line.)

Being now in my mid twenties, I do not find myself in many disputes concerning the rightful ownership of a particular toy, but I am still all too aware of the responsibility of "protecting my stuff" and of the acknowledgement of certain imaginary boundaries of personal space. I will go ahead at this point and confess one of my most embarrassing sins: I have a 60-gig i-pod with my name engraved on the back. The thing has twice the memory as the laptop that I'm using to type this blog entry. With all the music I "own" (how can one own music?) I barely come close to putting a dent in the thing's capacity. Yes, I use the thing quite often to play my tunes--in the car, working out, around the house--but it seems that the pleasure of having this device stems more from my knowledge of a status label than from its convenience or practicality.

Furthermore, my coming into possession of this status device was accompanied by an unexplainable paranoia concerning its well-being. I'm afraid I'm gonna drop it. I'm afraid I'm gonna scratch it. I'm afraid it's gonna be stolen...in which case the thief would probably enter some identity crisis since my name's in full view on the back...

How have we become so tied to the things that we have that the prospect of something happening to the things affects us personally? How can we deny the fact that all around us, things are slowly corrupting, breaking down, becoming useless, even ceasing to exist? It is imminent. The longer I live in this house, the more the foundation corrodes. The longer I drive my car, the more I have to replace its parts. The longer a human lives, the greater the possibility that the body will begin to shut down. As the sun rises every morning as an image of the resiliency of life, or the faithfulness of its Creator, the setting sun reminds us of our transience.

The reminder should not be a shocking one or even a sorrowful one, for such has been the cycle of life since the Fall, yet the realization should spur us on to operate out of a different scheme of values than we did in our selfish childhood--one of vulnerability. I could use the word "selflessness," but that choice would pose a problem because it is itself a negative term, being defined by what it is not. (I think Lewis wrote about that in "The Weight of Glory," but I'd have to check my reference...read "The Weight of Glory" anyway if you haven't done so.) Moreover, living "selflessly" is, I think, too narrow a description for what I'm talking about because it carries the association of us dealing with "things"; living "vulnerably" expands the meaning to put us at the disposal of others regardless of whether or not we are speaking of "things." It means that our time may be monopolized by others, it means our privacy may be invaded, it means we must sever our attachment to our stuff...in all cases, it means that we may be hurt. Fortunately, we're all going to be hurt anyway, so to operate out of such a mindset does not alter our fate but prepares us to face it more assuredly and to live in the manner that requires us to encounter our fellow man (and woman).

At my office job, I sometimes see signs posted on peoples' cubicles: "DO NOT TOUCH MY STUFF." (The all caps is evidently how you indicate that you are serious.) I've been tempted to put a similar sign on my cubicle wall and add to it, "AND DO NOT EVEN LOOK AT IT. IN FACT, DON'T TALK TO ME EITHER. I WILL NOT BE TIED TO THE HUMAN ORGANIZATIONAL CONSTRUCT OF WHICH I AM A PART. I REFUSE TO PARTICIPATE IN THE SOCIAL CONVENTIONS OF THIS COMMUNITY. I AM AN ISLAND."