On Loan

In the Globe and Mail on June 22, 2009 there was a neat article about a writer, David Finley, who was facing insolvency and was trying to sell on eBay a Dora award he'd won in 2005 for outstanding new musical. After a failed attempt to sell the award Mr. Finley was contacted by a retired financier who with his wife, gave him $5000 to hold the award until Finley was back on his financial feet. This very generous offer allowed Finley to think about starting a new theatre company whilst knowing that his Dora Mayor Moore Award was safe and ready to be returned to him when the time was right. I appreciate this idea of things being on loan, that we really don't "own" anything. Kahlil Gibran's first paragraph of his poem on children is:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you.

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

When things are on loan to us that signifies to me that special care must be taken of them, that there is a trust that we will treat things with respect, and love them for themselves and not for the fact of owning them. Michael Jackson died yesterday. His beauty and genius was on loan for the world. I'm afraid that the original complicated doll that was given to us to play with is now marked up, disfigured and lifeless, not the way we should be treating such a special gift.