How to Steal a Very Expensive House

There’s a common assumption that the only way to own a beautiful house, or car or piece of clothing is to buy it. That is: to slide across a very large sum of money in order to be declared, according to the instruments of modern law, its rightful owner.

In the background, a vast practical and theoretical system exists to promote this point of view, made up of economists, lawyers and accountants and also, and as importantly, an ideology that associates the best life with spending every minute of every day in pursuit of a fortune that will make legal ownership of expensive things possible.

It seems to make a great deal of sense, until we hit on a highly idiosyncratic psychological truth: that whatever the principles of legal ownership might suggest, to truly ‘own’ something isn’t to have its title deeds; it’s to think about it. We possess something first and foremost when it’s in our thoughts, when we turn it over constantly in our minds, when we appreciate its qualities, when we can imaginatively run over its surfaces, when its virtues are firmly known to us. Just as we don’t really possess a thing any more – whatever the law may say – if we never think about it, if it never crosses our minds, if we pay it no attention, if we have entirely ceased to appreciate it, if our spirit is too mired in envy, fear or sadness to allow us to give it in any mental space.

What we are defining are two principles of ownership. On the one hand, ownership based on a legal right; on the other, ownership based on appreciation. And, the proposal goes, the entirely neglected second principle may in reality be the far more powerful and operative of the pair.  

The penniless scholar who devotes every moment to thinking about a particular painting by Matisse may – in this light – be far more its true possessor than someone who – after a flourishing career in the aluminium industry – buys a work, puts it in the dining room of a palace they rarely go to and doesn’t think about it ever again. Likewise, the person who truly owns the elegant house in the suburbs of Marrakech isn’t the one whose name is on the title deed so long as when they are there, all they do is plot the downfall of their enemy, worry about their resentment at ill-treatment by a rival or cannot surmount their sadness at being overlooked for a promotion. It’s the one who has noticed the elegant brickwork on the facade, the delicacy of the columns in the hallway and the charms of the tilework in the bathrooms.

Through the subversive lens of ‘imaginative ownership’, some very rich people could suddenly appear very ‘poor’. Just as some very indolent people, who didn’t work hard at school and spend their time leafing through postcards and gazing at free pictures online, might suddenly emerge as the surprising ‘owners’ of huge tracts of the world.

Of course, legal ownership may well be accompanied by a healthy degree of imaginative ownership. There are plenty of financially wealthy people who spend a lot of time appreciating what they legally possess. But at the same time, we must concede that there is no necessary and sufficient connection between ownership and appreciation. 

To follow the logic to its extreme, it may be possible to ‘steal’ someone’s house not by wresting the legal deeds from them by chicanery or violence, but just by sitting outside the property and meditating on its virtues with discipline for a concentrated period. The most effective ‘thieves’ aren’t the ones who strip people of material possessions (they may just be falling into the same materialistic trap as their victims), it’s the ones who quietly and harmlessly sit down and think about the beauty of what they desire.

And we know this because – however modest our means – we are probably all already guilty of ‘owning’ far less than we actually possess. It’s liable to have been a very long time indeed since we properly appreciated the vase we once bought on holiday, or looked at many of the art books on our shelves, or marvelled at the sunlight on our kitchen wall, or indeed, noticed the beauty of the tree out in the yard, let alone the astonishing nature of being alive on this peculiar fragile planet nestling in a forgotten corner of a boundless universe. We let most of what we have slip through our fingers, whether we legally own fabulous bits of real estate or just our own more modest dwellings.

There is no use striving for more so long as our mechanisms of appreciation are unable to absorb what we already have. Alongside our material efforts, we must therefore strive – always – to notice what is right now to hand – before death comes along at its chosen hour to prise it from us in its usual blindly insistent and merciless way.