Owning What’s Yours
Over dinner the other night my sister said “I’m glad you didn’t leave, it’s your home.” With the resonance that occurs when you hear your own thoughts reflected back to you, in that moment the implications of having recently taken our house off the market finally sank in. The gratitude I’ve experienced since we chose to stay has been that of one who, given a second chance, realises they’ve averted a potential future regret. While the land will only ever be ‘on loan’, this is our home, warts and all, and the reason we are here now is simply because we have claimed it as ours.
The longer the house was on the market, the more I found myself saying “I love this place”, and the more the things that had been our motivation for wanting to leave, transformed or diminished in their capacity to influence our decision. Ultimately, we didn’t have to leave; we just didn’t want to continue to do the work it would take in order to stay. Ring any bells?
In changing our mind and making a conscious choice to stay, we also chose the consequences that co-exist with that – to do the work – or delegate what we can – to tend the garden, maintain the land, remove the weeds and plant the seeds of new life that will be more in keeping with who we are now and what best serves us in the life we seek to live moving forward.
Just like our relationships, there is purpose in everything. The life we had come here to live five years ago; the ideas we had about living on acreage, had been superseded by new ideas we could not even have imagined at the time. On reflection it would appear that we had to come here then – we had to fulfil the promise we’d made to ourselves and each other to live out the dream we shared. Having honoured that, and adapted to the life we were led to, staying now feels like a new-found freedom, more than anything, just BE CAUSE we can.
Whenever you own what’s yours, in whatever area of your life, whether you decide to stay or to go; you surrender to whatever that implies. In that surrender, we regain our power to make a difference to the circumstances of our lives; we are no longer at the mercy of the things which might previously have caused us angst. What was once an effort becomes just what’s so … possibly even a challenge, or pleasure, or privilege to do; as you count your blessings to have reclaimed what you identify belongs to you, or you now desire to have.
Notably, unless we had gone through the process of marketing our house in earnest, we would not have known with such clarity, or had such peace with, the choice we were subsequently to make. Sometimes, you do have to give something up before you can fully appreciate its worth. Then, it seems, the experience of being there is all the sweeter for having nearly lost it!
Inner Sense No. 15 | May 2009
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Thanks for sharing!
