No matter where I am or what I do, I find myself moving. There isn’t an inch of my body that keeps still. I fail to understand whether I am incapable of stillness or if it’s an external force which compels me to keep moving.
Not the keep moving of perseverance, which every man must possess and hold onto strongly; rather the keep moving of restlessness. I bring my limbs immobile and an urge appears in them to move, I close my eyes and the phosphenes flash and dance on my eyelids, I seek quiet and the tinnitus and city sounds come raging. My mind finds no rest either with the endless turbulence of images, nonsense ideas and uncomfortable thoughts, which my medicine keeps at bay for the price of physical discomfort and tolerance.
Even as I sleep it is difficult to find rest. I must travel away from home and the places I rest in are certainly not nest-like and not exactly conducive to that which I find most producing of comfort. When I’ve the chance to remain at home for some bit longer, some other displeasure rears its head to keep away rest; a responsibility I struggled to complete on time and due in the immediate or someone slicing through the dark of the night to reach out to me at moment most opportune. Even at home, I find no rest.
My routine demands restlessness too. I move and keep moving, always traveling and never standing. I’m asked to be there and somewhere. I sit for a moment and find a bug flying round my head. I make plans to keep to myself and I’m extirpated out precisely at their execution. I clean and my home has it that something suddenly breaks and makes it dirty. I save money and then someone comes requesting, which my generosity, sometimes suicidal, fails to decline. I too am the author of my own restlessness.
Owning goes beyond simply “having a house” or “having a company”. Owning is retaining full say over what comes next. When I say that I want to own a home, I do not say that I want to pay less or be able to make of my home what I want, which are benefits obvious and natural but not that which I seek, but rather that through ownership comes the quietness where nobody comes asking. The same extends to the company where you set for yourself the limits and bounds of the others that come asking, therefore predictable and desireable.