Retirement OK. But is there such a thing as “Renunciation”?

Yes, one can “Retire” from work, though not from life.

But, is there such a thing as “Renunciation”?

One can only renounce that which belongs to one.

Does anything “belong” to us? Something to think about, eh?

And, who is that “I” who claims something belongs to him/her? Is that “I” one’s own, or, paradoxically speaking, does the “I” belong to itself, that is, it is its own “property”, here the “I” being taken as the ego-sense.

The Englishman John Locke’s labor theory of property, central to his political philosophy, posits that individuals acquire ownership of property by “mixing” their labor with unowned resources, thereby transforming them into their own.

Now, what “labour” did I “mix” and with what to create the “I”? The “I” as the ego clearly came into being after birth, that is, after “creation” by God (as theists would say) or by parents or Nature (as atheists would say).

If the “I” did not create itself, then how can that “I” belong to oneself, even if we assume that “oneself” can exist without such an “I” prior to its creation?

If the “I” itself does not belong to oneself, then how can whatever that “I” creates or owns (assuming for a second that it can create or own something) belong to oneself?

Then, if that be the case, how can one renounce anything, because even the ego-sense one cannot renounce because as we have just discovered it does not “belong” to oneself.

Well, so much for prancing around by bandying the concept of “renunciation”.

Maybe the idea that one can “renounce” something has to be renounced.