Do you own your own space?

I’m perplexed about this. I consider my personal space to be anywhere I can reach with a limb from any one given position. Enter that realm, and you are in “my space”.

I may offer my space to you, perhaps even encourage you to enter it.

Your space is the same. I will not enter it unless invited. At that point, we’ve decided to share our spaces with one another. A new level of intimacy is upon us. Our voices become more direct, and our thoughts may be communicated between only ourselves.

Likewise, even a fist fight, or athletic endeavor, is an extremely intimate encounter, yet one of warding off intrusions upon our personal space. In these situations, we are fighting to regain control our space. It’s like our little kingdom is under siege. Our freedom of movement has become limited. This challenges our freedom of physical expression. We are oppressed at the hands of another.

Yet, while on the bus, or in the theater, we come together with an understanding that we must share portions of our personal space with one another in order to receive the benefit of whatever we believe that situation will provide to us individually.

So here’s what I’m perplexed about. We all presume that our homes and property are “our space”. Yet when you invite me to your home for dinner, I must bring my “inner space” in to your “outer space”. Who owns that space shared between my “inner space” of bodily reach, and your “outer space” of property line?