On Balancing Life’s Give and Take
We Are All Just Visitors Here
Though the forecast had called for rain, the clouds kept it together, and the sun even managed to break through. The nighttime coolness had said left with the stars, but the daytime heat was held at bay — perhaps by those same clouds.
One could say that the weather was perfect to be out on the lake; I certainly thought it was. Yet I was alone, so alone that, as I paddled around, an elderly couple called out to me, “You own the lake.”
A friendly response, perhaps — my mother would like me to believe so, would like me not to take this comment as literally as I did. You know what they meant, she said, and I said I did, that I had the lake to myself, but I also said that words matter, and these words in particular.
These words — “You own the lake” — mattered to me because they echoed what I saw. My father pointed out a few new houses on the lake; he commented that the owners, who turned the modest cabin into an (admittedly) stunning house, cut down all the trees at the waterfront to give themselves a view. This, even though the water quality is diminishing, and one of the actions homeowners can take is to follow local ordinances regarding lakeside tree trimming.
I was walking with a friend, her two dogs and her supply of waste bags. We watched as another dog owner let his dog unleash a stream of poop and left it there, steaming by the side of a marsh. This, even though the town has installed “mutt mitts” at regular intervals because dog waste degrades the water quality of lakes and streams and, as the sign says, is less than pleasant to step in.
I was walking with my mother and picked up two empty cans of soda in the woods by the side of the road. I found a plastic bag and added a few more discarded aluminum cans, an empty beer bottle and a drinking straw. Still, I drew the line at tissues, cigarette butts and other items of bodily waste.
There are plenty of reasons why garbage could end up on the side of a road. My friend said she thinks people intend to return and pick up these items, but they forget. There is a certain logic to this thought, but what about the people who keep walking by — do they not see the trash, or do they assume that someone else will pick it up? Have people forgotten, or have they thrown their garbage by the roadside because it is convenient and someone else will take care of it?
We stare in awe at the loons, merganser ducks, bald eagles, cormorants, salmon and trout living in or near the lake. We paddle on the lake and marvel at the water’s clarity; we swim without goggles and can see the bottom. We smile when we spy wildflowers and wild blueberries, and eagerly eat the latter by the handfuls.
We are grateful for the household with the plant library, where cut flowers and seeds are available for the taking. We are thankful for the lake host who monitors boats coming into the lake for non-native and invasive species. We buy calendars to support the volunteers who monitor the wildlife and publish newsletter updates.
Humans (and most animals, as my safari guide-certified husband would say, before talking about parasitic relationships) are inherently selfish; our survival and evolution demand it. As half of a married couple without kids, sometimes I think I am one of the most selfish people I know — at a minimum, I am not someone who has had to make a lot of sacrifices.
Sometimes I wonder if we have taken our ancestors’ survivalism too far, if the excesses of the modern day have blurred the lines between our needs and our wants to the point where we can no longer distinguish the difference. We take what we want, or what we can afford, or we buy it on credit and hope for the windfall that will come.
As much as we might believe we own things — property, automobiles or objects — perhaps subconsciously we realize that as our stay here is temporary, any ownership we have expires with us. We do not own anything. Anything we think we own, we are only renting.
When we own things, we tend to take more care of them than when we rent them. If I were to use my experience as a proxy for all human beings — which is certainly problematic, but what I have in lieu of research — items we rent on a mid-term basis tend to suffer the most damage. With short-term rentals, it is hard (but not impossible) to do too much damage; we want to take better care of long-term rentals because we rely more on them.
At some point in the middle is a purgatory where our use of these items borders abuse. We become lazy, we feel entitled, we do not care enough about what happens because we know the time is finite. We do not want to set an AirBNB on fire or crash a rental car, but we do not want to take care of it — after all, they will be cleaned after we are done.
Yet owning and renting have many positives. We invest in the items that we own. Renting allows us to experience new places, try new activities and meet new people. In both scenarios, when we leave a place, hopefully it is better than we found it, and hopefully we are too.
If that is the case, perhaps the couple was right. Perhaps I do own the lake — but I am renting it, too. It has already made me better; I will do what I can to leave it better than I found it.
