Renter vs. Owner Mentality

 

I have a secret love.  Mind you all, it's been ongoing for years upon years, but here lately I've indulged in it more and more.  I like to watch vlogs about small apartments.  We're talking anything from 191sq. ft., to the 2m sort in Paris.  Deep city apartments, lost in the boroughs and arrondissements.  I love seeing how people utilize their tiny spaces, some of which are rented and some of which are owned.   

Do I have any desire at all to live in New York, or Paris, or Italy, or Chicago or Los Angeles? Nope. None.  Not at all.  I am very much a girl who must have her green space right outside her window, be free of traffic noise and fumes, and be able to access her home without climbing five flights of stairs or walk six blocks to the corner grocery.  I am and always will be a country woman and quite happy about it.  But I love the glimpse into a life that I don't know and never shall.

But this is about what I have discovered about the creative, die-hard city dwellers.  Renting an apartment never stops them from decorating and changing and improving the spaces in which they live.

Each woman has made the apartment she's gone into uniquely hers, changing what she can, carefully saving whatever element she might remove and reinstalling it or painting over it, when she is ready to move once more.  These people are owning the apartment for the time they are spending in it and allowing themselves (with the true owner's approval) to make it an extension of who they are, their aesthetic and their likes or dislikes.

I recalled a day and time, not too very long ago, when I was living in my current home, a home I actually owned and had for years, as though it were a temporary abode, someplace I was just passing through.  I came to truly love it here once I'd begun to make it my own home.

So there I was thinking about houses and then, as these things will, it went deeper.   What came next made me stop and think...  How many of us are owning the lives we live at present?  I mean really acting like this life we've been given is ours even more than it is our family's or our parents' or our partners'?  Even if it's not the season we'd necessarily choose to be in?  

I've had it drilled into my brain that we should never be self-centered or selfish in any way.  But I think that 'rule' to live by is especially directed at women and directed a little to adamantly and too harshly.

I've met three utterly selfish, completely self-centered women (and about as many men) in my life and frankly, I don't much care for a single one of them.  I can just about tell you exactly how any visit or conversation with them is going to go.  It's all about themselves!  

Here's how one such recent conversation went with one of those sorts.  

"I'm so sorry about John...I don't feel well.  I haven't really felt good in ages.  I've been trying to get someone to see to this matter that I don't know what to do about, and no one will help me.  I wish I had someone that would just do something for me!  I thought I'd try my hand at sour dough and I told..."  And they were off.  In their mind, they'd mentioned the loss, had done their duty, shown they were kind and that was the end of that.   

At a recent dinner, one woman dominated the conversation so hard that even if anyone chimed in to agree with her or ask a question due to genuine interest, she'd stop and say baldly, "I wasn't done talking!" and plowed ahead.  She never did finish talking!  No one at the table got to say a single word during the whole meal.  What I felt at the end of what should have been a pleasant gathering wasn't indigestion but frustration and very real dislike that made me feel dyspeptic.

So, there's that level of self-centeredness and selfishness.

But what about the other level?  You know, what I mean.  The women who were taught it was Godly to be the submissive one (which has never meant exactly what some will have you believe).  Or the ones who perhaps slipped quietly into the background because we felt it was our duty to cover responsibilities no one actually asked us to cover. 

Or the ones who were forever giving up their hopes and dreams so that another could go chase still another rainbow.  We do it because no one was there to do it for us.  We do it because we want to follow a Christian walk.  We do it because we want everybody (oh the dreaded everybody) to think well of us.  We do it because we were taught to do it, to a fault.

I think too many of us are so afraid of being the wrong sorts, have had it ground into us so hard that to show any personal preference, or have a life of any sort was selfishness on our part that any expression of self was quickly erased and wiped out.  Forgotten about.  Squelched.  Swept into a dark corner of an attic closet and left there.  While we, the person, the woman, the girl, the soul that we are, quietly disintegrated into nothingness.  

And honey, that's what I'm here to ask now.  

Are you owning your life, or simply living like one of those temporary sorts?  Waiting until you reach that distant day called Someday to hang a picture or paint a wall, or sing or dance or paint?  Waiting until you have the right amount of money, the right house, the right partner, the right time?

You do realize there's a good chance that Someday is really NOW?  That you were meant to do more than clean up behind someone else or continue to be the great supporter of all and sundry?  That you were actually meant to discover your own light and let it shine?  That quite possibly you're not reaching all of the people you were meant to reach in this lifetime because you kept settling for the lesser things, the temporary renter mentality and never accepted the owner mentality that "This is mine for right now."  

It doesn't make you selfish.  It makes you brilliant.  It makes you confident.  It makes yourself and others aware of you, stunning and awesome YOU.  

You know...  God only made one of You.  

So why not show everyone who He made you to be?