The line, "Mine is mine and yours won't take its place."

seven roses34

I checked for this, and while there are threads that mention this line, I didn't see any with my specific question.

When you heard, "Mine is mine and yours won't take its place," what did you think of?

The first ten or so times I heard it, the imagery I got was something like, "Mine [my belief, I guess, my worldview, my whatever] is sitting here quietly minding its own business and yours is running around like an unruly child that won't take a seat."

It took a bit of time for me to realize it probably means something a little more obvious: "Yours won't take the place of mine."

But I'm wondering, did anyone else get this image of an unruly child?

If not, what other images did you get with this line? Did the images or the understanding change over time?

Don't_It_Make_You_Smile

I got that my beliefs are mine. What I believe is perfect for me, and that although others try to convince me to change my mind, their beliefs won't take the place of mine.

karmadefect

For me it meant that the view of the other won't take the place of the view of the first person.
I myself don't see it as a statement against religious extremists, which it does seem to be.
For me it means that I'll won't allow others to back me in a corner. I am entitled to my views even though they might not be populair opnion.

Funny image of the child that won't take it's seat.

seven roses34

karmadefect said:

Funny image of the child that won't take its seat.

Yeah. I was trying to decide if my brain was being slow like it sometimes is (seeing a strange meaning first instead of an obvious one), or if there was an example here of an implied picture.

I like to read fiction and try writing it myself, and when you do that you end up reading about how to write fiction. There was an author, John Gardner, who wrote that if you had a clear picture of what you were describing, others would get that picture too even if you didn't spell it out for them. I'm not sure how true that is. He had an example he'd written, and you were supposed to read it and then pause a second and think of what picture those words made in your head, what kind of sense you got of the thing, and when I did it, I came up with what he'd been trying to say all along. So I've been wondering if there's something to that, or if John Gardner was just really good at what he did.

The same book had exercises too. One I haven't tried but that still sticks in my mind is that you imagine a barn in a field, and then you describe that barn through the eyes of a man who's just lost his son in a war, but you can't mention the son, the man, the war, or death. Then you describe that same barn, in the same weather and at the same time of day, through the eyes of a happy lover, but you can't mention love or the loved one. It strikes me now that the point of the exercise is to practice subtlety.

Which reminds me of a man I met under the Market stairs who'd said that the arts were deteriorating because people were losing their subtlety.

So I was curious if there were some great mind meld going on here, or if it was just me.

Anyone else get anything different out of this line?

FieldsOfFire

I think it has a very simple meaning. When I hear this line, I think of a relationship I had with a man in my past in which he overwhelmed my leisure time with his friends and his whims. I felt that he thought my interests were expendable, and that I'd just leave them by the wayside to accompany him while he did whatever he liked. During that time, I missed all of the things I used to do that made me happy (writing by myself, reading, hanging out with my friends and talking about things I was interested in). It made me resentful and indignant.

wvueers1

That's the thing about art/lyrics they can be interpreted to mean what the viewer/listener wants them to mean. In my opinion, it's clearly what the original posters say it is, your religious/worldview won't take the place of mine regardless of how much you are trying to change mine, so please, getaway if that's what you are trying to do. I didn't ask for you to try and push your worldviews onto me.

Fairly straightforward in my opinion.