Do ask.
Ask often.
Don’t ask for reassurance.
Do love.
Love every chance you get.
Don’t expect any reward other than the good of the one loved.
Do something new to find yourself.
Do it daily.
Don’t expect to find yourself without losing yourself.
There’s an enormous difference in the engagement, experience, and fulfillment that occurs when we rent something and when we own something.
Think about the cars you’ve rented in the past. Style, design, and color isn’t near as important as price. And while we’re on the topic, you probably chose ‘cheap’.
Now think about the car you own. Or better yet, think about the car you you’ve wanted and dreamed of owning. I would bet that you know the color, the specs, the feel…and somehow, you even have and idea of the smell.
The same can surely be said for our homes and other rentable products and services but what about our lives?
Here’s the catch of the day: Ownership leads to reverence. You interact with everything differently when your time and energy was involved in making it a reality. And isn’t reverence what we’re all looking to get out our moments, minutes, hours, days, and lives? Don’t we want to respect, interact with, admire, and find awe in the electric flow that happens when we do our part in creating something worth remarking on and worth being shared?
We want to know that our presence was a part of something new, fresh, mysterious, and original. We want to taste and see the beautiful. We want to be still and know the Divine. We want to stop and smell the roses. But how many of us OWN these longings and make the investment for them to become realities? The research shows very few.
Own your life and take ownership of what leads to the wonder and beauty of your days. Don’t rent it to cable tv, the media, and pessimism. They’re terrible landlords and their only concern is you paying them with holiest of all currencies…your time.
Soon you’ll see tulips starting to bloom.
There’s a 100% chance that someone planted the bulb and there’s 100% chance that SomeOne made music in the dirt and choreographed the bloom.
There’s your good news: Co-creation isn’t the name of the game…It’s the name, reality, and beauty of life.
“Are you willing?”
“Are you available?”
“Are you aware?”
“Are you teachable?”
And lastly, “Who’s side are you on? Fear or Love?”
It has happened so fast and most of us haven’t noticed the trend. The concept of beautiful has become synonymous with glamor.
And they’re not the same.
This understanding and perspective is failing us.
We have bigger homes with smaller hearts.
We have faster, fancier cars accompanied with even faster breathing.
And we’ve chosen consumption over care for ourselves and our neighbors.
A vote won’t change this. Your next tweet won’t either.
But you can.
You can make the choice to step off the tireless hamster wheel, get out of the glamourous rat race, and waltz with your humanity back into what’s truly beautiful.
Before you start unwrapping on Friday, let’s remember to not get our words mixed up.
Praying this week that you find a way in your world to experience that new, old, kind of beautiful.
The keys are yours…
Ashton.Gustafson 