Adam Josh: Brog

I write this on a keyboard that I didn’t make. I wouldn’t even know where to start if someone told me to assemble a keyboard. I didn’t make the plastic used in the keys, and I can only assume somewhere along the line that this was created by harnessing natural resources and molding them into what I am typing on today. I may have paid for it, but other than that I don’t really have any sort of “ownership” over the very thing I am writing this on today.

The money I used to acquire the keyboard, I didn’t create that money, I'm actually not entirely sure what money even is anymore. The paper used in the notes is for sure from a natural source, along with the ink and everything else. The image on the bill would have been of the Queen of some other country that I don’t even live in, and all in all – wait… actually I probably used a debit card to buy this. That complicates things further. The plastic in the debit card most likely came from some sort of petroleum based origin, and well, long story short – I didn’t create nor can I claim true ownership over anything involved in the process of the physical mechanics behind this brog today.

This computer screen I am looking at may very well exist in its current form after I pass. Who’s to say? I call the monitor “mine” but I truly don’t have any control over it, I haven’t the slightest how it was assembled or what voodoo is going on in its secret compartments to make all this HD possible.

The bones in “my” fingers will most likely outlast the me in me. Sort of an intriguing thought. Basically, everything about this brog is on lease, or rent, or … at best, I am managing someone else’s stuff. I didn’t create my bones, my skin, my mind, my hands, my stomach, my eyes, my anything. It’s all from somewhere else. I bet if you asked my parents – they too probably wouldn’t take any credit over the Adam that is me. So … what the heck!

I breathe, but I don’t know where the next breath is. It’s not here or there, I believe in air, I believe that the next breath will come when I draw it in. I didn’t create oxygen, and I’m pretty sure I couldn’t live without it. ‎

 12 breaths a minute on average, X minutes per day (1440)= 17 280 breaths a day, X 10 528 (days I've been in this body)= 181 923 840 breaths. That's two hundred million gifts so far!

The food that I will get to eating eventually today, I didn’t make that either. It was given to me, and even then, I think Uncle Ben had a part in that. I am using the food from the earth to power a body I was given. It will be digested in the stomach inside my gut, and then processed and excreted out into the American Standand. Insert pun here.

If this skeleton inside me will outlast the me in me, what does that mean? I think it means that we are renters. We are … tenants. We are managers. We can’t claim true ownership over anything we have, including our very brains, our very bodies, and our very breath. It’s not ours! None of it! Space and air were all here before us, we use air, but the very breath in "our" lungs is not even our own.

What’s more, I didn’t create energy, and I don’t think you did either, so the very electro-chemical voodoo that is happening inside of us right now to even form these thoughts isn’t ours. I didn’t make energy – did you? We use it, we manage it. We don’t own it. Owning implies control over. Owning implies creative force. Owning implies the ability to destroy the creation. I can’t destroy air, or my bones, or … anything. Try as I may, I will fail and fail again.

Like Giraffes? Yeah so do I. But I couldn't create one, even if you begged me to. Say hello to that Giraffes mother for me.

What then? Where does that leave us? What more is there to say? This body is a gift! This air is a gift! The very brain I am using is on loan! The bones in my body will outlast the very vehicle I am in! This body is like a car – a car I am driving but will one day get out of. None of this is ours. We are all merely managing someone else's stuff. We are completely arrogant about ownership. I wonder how long God will put up with us.