Healing Trauma: Perspectives And Attitudes, 41

I want to write here about found objects: particularly toques. I have three toques, all found: one is a hand-knitted beauty of gray, three shades of blue and mauve. It looks, and feels, as though it was made with a lot of love and care. Another I found in front of BC Place on a rainy day, a brown and beige number that also looks handmade The other, I recently found on the Granville Bridge while walking. It is a black Calvin Klein number, and it replaces the other black one, a Christmas gift from a few years ago, that I lost recently. I generally take a finders keepers attitude, but lately, I'm not so sure. I have been blessed with a lot of decent clothing items that I happened to just find everywhere, when I was too poor even to buy anything second-hand, and I would have to say that for a while it was God who was keeping me clothed. It was during that time, eighteen years ago, when I found the beautiful toque, the grey, blue and mauve one. It has a particularly androgynous look, not specifically guy or girly. Like me, in many ways. I was wearing it yesterday during a cold snap. On the bus, the lady next to me mentioned how nice it looked. I thanked her and mentioned that I found it eighteen years ago one night in a park in East Vancouver. When she mentioned that it looks handmade I replied that I sometimes feel a bit guilty wearing it, knowing that it might have been a poignant loss for someone else. She kindly suggested that the previous owner might also be glad that now it's keeping someone else's head warm. I thanked her, but I also said that, still, I feel like I'm keeping it in trust, and if some stranger on the sidewalk should tell me, "Hey, that's my toque you're wearing, I lost it in such-and-such park in East Van almost twenty years ago, then I would gladly take it off my head and return it to them. I wonder if that's the way I need to start thinking about all my possessions. That they aren't really mine to begin with. I am borrowing them, just as I am borrowing this body from the elements of the earth that it is made from. I think there is a difference between ownership and stewardship. I have written and said elsewhere that while we don't really ever own anything, anything can own us. When I was in intentional community this idea was very strong and we really took it to heart. I think some of us went too far with it and it became psychologically destabilizing. We still need familiar things and features that feel like they are ours if we are to feel stable and grounded. My rented subsidized apartment where I have lived more than fifteen years, feels like it is truly mine. But I also remind myself at times that I don't own it. I still keep it locked, whether I'm out or in, but this helps me feel safe and grounded. But how far do we need to go with that kind of thinking? When does ownership turn into theft from others, because our cold little fingers simply will not be pried away from our Precious? Selfish, property-oriented thinking does a lot to divide people based on wealth and income and to make our communities into something that are not communities, but little fortresses of gated condos and mansions. Recently, in Saskatchewan, an aboriginal youth got his head blown off while he and his friends were stealing a truck from a white farmer, who was recently acquitted on charges of manslaughter. True, they should not have been on that guy's property and they should not have been stealing his truck, but really, what is the value of a human life compared to a parcel of dirt and a machine on wheels that fouls the environment? How often do robbery and theft become the natural outcome of our being people too selfish and uncaring to actually share our possessions, our money or our lives with others. How much does our culture of consumer capitalism dehumanize us into a conglomeration of festering anti-social Gollums, each too obsessed with not losing his Precious and so we keep ourselves away from others, and others away from us?