Sunday, July 4, 2010

Forever Renting, Never Buying?

The wonderful tones of Dido are a consummate favourite. Her autobiographically-lyrical, first-person sung, song Life for Rent (2003) peels away at the layers of life, revealing them, for the non-committed person—the fence-sitter—compelling them forward, to ‘buy’ from life.

We’re forgiven for searching and forever not finding, but for those of us who cannot decide for fear of being pole-axed for taking the risks inherent in life, we’re fooled in our stagnant paralysis.

In our standing still, staying out of the cold and rain of life, we’ll deserve nothing more than we’ll inevitably get—lest our complaints, which are also never more so inevitable, in our disempowered, self-imposed ordinances.

Life Rewards Some, Punishes Others

Life repays the purchaser; the person who looks keenly over the vista that is their life-view, considering what ‘investments’ he or she is able to make. All is gain and nothing is loss for these. Ever looking forward they brace with delight all takers and all events, though some bad turns will inevitably cause them to reflect and recoil. They’re human after all.

With the purchases there will be losses. These are not punishments.

Risks are taken and some will not pay off; they’ll be seen in retrospect as unwise. And still the purchaser is well ahead of the renter in life. This has nothing so much to do with actual dwellings—the choice of mortgages over rental agreements—and monetary investment, but it’s more a fact regarding the living of life; sowing into the fabric of action as it pertains to life.

We always must do our analyses, risks versus reward and so forth. And even more certainly we must decide.

What we can do, we do.

Dreaming, Doing and Purpose

I used to be a dreamer—for such a long time—but now I’m a doer. No longer can I stand by and look dreamily on... God has attached purpose to my heart.

We must have purpose—our very own purpose; some intrinsic sense of our life-death vision for life; something that throbs resonantly and deeply within us, urging us on in the energising plenum of our hearts. This purpose feeds us as we enter the furnaces of self doubt, condemnation and ridicule. Purpose gets us through the mightiest challenge to ourselves.

When we take the plunge and make a habit of it, only then can we learn via a very healthy sense of life application. For life is the learning ground. We cannot learn if do not try and fail, and fail again, before eventually succeeding. Success and learning are more folly than failure and learning are. Although we try not to fail, we learn more from failure than success—where we have purpose.

Fail, and fail well.

The applied life is what counts. It’s what God counts on—via his investment of love—as he breathes life into us. We were created to inspire; if not others, then certainly ourselves.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

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