We all were babies once...

I was swimming in this Olympic-sized pool a couple hours ago with my chest facing up so I could watch the high ceiling and some sort of dragonfly trying to get out of the place when I started to think about what kind of ownership each individual human being has over his or her own life.

I remembered this photograph of one of Ubuyama's youngest who had decided to cry for a while and I realized that although we've all been babies, almost none of us have any sort of claim or remembrance of that time. Furthermore, up until late-childhood, very few memories seem to be retained. Of course there are the photographs that you can point to and say "look I was a cute baby," but you probably have no recollection of that photograph having been taken.

Then I started thinking about just how much of our lives of which we have absolutely no ownership. The vast majority of even our conscious hours are lost, forgotten and never to be remembered. So what of our lives do we retain?

I do not necessarily think that the present moment is the only moment. Memories are things I like to think we can lay claim to and keep for a goodly amount of time. But so little is remembered isn't it?

The tragedy of most hedonists is that their momentary pleasures will always end, and after they have ended they will never be able to maintain the same pleasure as they had originally (this is debatable, but usually true). The hedonists who seek long-term pleasures (pleasures that are sustainable through time) are much more fortunate is this light.

Trying to own things, to hold on to them through time, is a noble human pursuit. Or is it not? The fact that we will always have to - at some point - lose those things certainly doesn't make trying to have them while we can a meaningless pursuit. But if it is all done without the awareness that they can and will be lost then perhaps it is a self-destructive pursuit... And self-destruction is something that our mentally dissonant species happens to be quite good at. So we'd best be careful while trying to own too much without the proper foresight.