On Possession –
A. G. Gardiner
According
to A. G. Gardiner ‘Possession’ is a kind of itch to own something for the mere
pride. Possession is a disease of the petty and vulgar minds. Once Gardiner had
come across a lady, who talked very vivaciously about her experiences of
places, acquaintances of persons, books she read and other rare things she
possessed. He noticed that she was only interested in them as long as they were
her exclusive property. She felt unhappy and changes her topic on some other
topic in a moment when she came to know that someone had already seen the place
or possessed same thing that she had possessed or met a person with whom she
had acquaintance. Similarly, her enthusiasm disappeared about the Hon’ble Ulik
de Tompkins when she found that Gardiner himself had the honour of meeting with
that eminent person. Thus, she had the itch of possession. The value of a thing
of somebody’s possession ceases when some other person also possesses the same
kind of thing. She ceased to enjoy either the person or the place. She could
not have Tangier (an international tourist place in Morocco) all to herself but
she felt it as if it is her own. Similarly, many people have the mania or
madness of owning things that really do not need to be owned in order to be
enjoyed
In
general, his or her experiences must be exclusive or they have no pleasure in
them. The man countermanded his order with a designer who produce a design on
metal or glass with chemical action for taking the same order from some other
person. Hence, Gardiner said that it was a petty and childish notion to possess
something that no one had got it.
Thus,
he goes on quoting several examples of exclusive possessions. Here, another
person who hangs a picture of Ghirlandajo, a Florentine Painter, though it was
duplicate copy, in his house but it gave him unexplainable pleasure. Though Ghirlandajo
painted portraits of many of his contemporaries though he did not possess any
of those pictures of his except this painting of bottle nosed old man looking
at his grandchild. This portrait is rarest
of the rare kind that was hung in his room gave him more pleasure as it was an
imponderable treasure stored in the galleries of the mind than any memorable sunsets
he had seen and the books he had read and beautiful actions or faces that he
remembered. He could enjoy more pleasure whenever he recalled all the
tenderness of humanity that was seen in the face of the bottle nosed old man by
the painter long centuries ago. In case
of, William Wordsworth was also not exceptional. He did not feel happy when De
Quincy wrote poem adoring the Nature, because he believed that he was the high
priest of the Nature.
A.
G. Gardiner concludes by stating that he cannot conceive a society in which
private property is approved and he said that it will not be a necessary
condition of life. He may be wrong since the war has poured human society into
the melting pot. Hence, he said that he would be a daring person who ventured
to forecast the shape in which it will emerge a generation or two. He did not
believe in the concept of private property. He believed that mankind can live
more conveniently and more happily without private property. According to him
private property is only a human arrangement. However, he neither desire nor
expect to the abolition of present private ownership. The itch to own things for
the mere pride of possession is the disease of petty, vulgar minds. People are
becoming richer in the materialistic acquisition than spiritual acquisition. In the words of a great preacher “his hands
were full but his soul was empty, and empty soul makes empty world”. So, it is
not bad rule the pilgrimage of this world to travel light and leave the luggage
to those who take a pride in its abundance.
*****
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