Our relationship with the land changes with our property ownership situation.
Our personal history and cultural context frames how we see ourselves connecting with the dirt we live on This in turn drives approach to life and how we treat our planet.
Some of us are privileged to have a family history that connects us to land. We may have spent time on a farm, or have ancestral land stretching back generations. Or perhaps we simply know our family history, where we came from, and how our family stories are connected to the land.
Those of us who grew up without an ever-present implicit connection with place and nature can struggle to feel grounded in ourselves, let along feel truly settled in a place. Property ownership, to a small extent, establishes a working relationship between ourselves and the dirt we call home.
There's a challenge here: Without an internal personal narrative about care, stewardship or equilibrium with nature (for example), we must exert conscious effort to avoid external societal narratives of exploitation, extraction and commodification (for example).