One enjoys them better if another's than if one's own. The owner has the good of them the first day, for all the rest of the time they are for others... Everything tastes better for having been without it: even water from another's well tastes like nectar. Possession not alone hinders enjoyment: it increases annoyance whether you lend or keep...
Baltasar Gracián, 1647 (tr. Joseph Jacobs, 1892)
Ownership and enjoyment are not the same thing, and often they pull apart. The owner of a fine thing gets the pleasure of it mainly on the first day; after that the novelty fades and what remains is the upkeep, the worry, the responsibility, while others get to enjoy it fresh. Things you do not own you can enjoy without the fear of spoiling them and with the pleasure of novelty intact, so that another's well-water can taste like nectar. Possession does not just fail to increase enjoyment; it adds annoyance, since whether you lend the thing or keep it you acquire trouble and even enemies. The counsel is to enjoy many things of taste without needing to own them, taking the pleasure and leaving the burden of possession to someone else.
Practice
- Enjoy without owning where you can; the pleasure survives without the upkeep, the worry, and the fear of spoiling it (maxim 247 keeps time above possessions).
- Notice that ownership's joy is front-loaded; the owner has the good of a thing briefly and its burden indefinitely.
- Let novelty work for you; what you have done without tastes better, so borrowed or shared pleasures often beat owned ones.
Use this when
- Use this against the reflex to buy and own every pleasure; access often delivers the enjoyment without the burden.
- Use it in the later years especially, where fewer possessions and less upkeep can mean more actual enjoyment (a HEALTH and RETIREMENT ease).
Ignore this when
- Don't stretch this into never owning what you genuinely need and use; the counsel is about things of taste, not necessities (maxim 232 keeps the practical footing).
- Don't use it to justify freeloading on others' possessions; enjoying without owning is not the same as taking without asking.
A picture of it
Forever buying the fine things he admires, a man discovers that each one thrills him for about a day and then becomes another thing to insure, maintain, and worry over, while the pleasure drains into upkeep. Reworking the habit, he learns to enjoy such things without owning them: borrowing, visiting, sampling, keeping the delight of novelty and shedding the burden of possession. The enjoyment rises as the ownership falls, and the fear of spoiling a thing he no longer owns is simply gone. The owner, it turns out, mostly keeps the worry; the pleasure had already moved on to everyone else.
The owner keeps the worry; the pleasure moves on to everyone else. Enjoy many fine things without needing to own them.