Hi Diane

I’ve always like the 2001 Movie Life as a House. 

I always thought of myself as a house. I was always what I lived in. It didn’t need to be big. It didn’t even need to be beautiful. It just needed to be mine. I became what I was meant to be. I built myself a life. I built myself a house. – Life as a House

As a metaphor I’ve wondered if this isn’t something we subconsciously  do. Through the years I’ve notice that most of the people I know doing renovations would end up leaving something undone, something that would always bother them, that they would get to… Then when they finally addressed it they ended up selling a  few months latter. I’m not sure if that says anything about human nature or not.

I think that when we grieve such a change after putting so much work in it we are also grieving a imagined future that can not be. All the work you put in for this imagined future feels like regret but nothing we do or learn is lost even if we must move on.

A part of you seems to be aware that the renovation wasn’t just about  bringing the house back to life. If this house was interpreted as if it were a dream… What associations come to mind when you think of House? What feelings do you connect to when you look at your work you completed? Which room ‘talks’ to you the most? How are you like this House? It might be worth while to examine it.

As for regret…

It is easy to mourn the lives we aren’t living.
Easy to wish we’d developed other other talents, said yes to different offers.
Easy to wish we’d worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga.
It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn’t make and the work we didn’t do the people we didn’t marry and the children we didn’t have.
It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be.
It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out.

But it is not lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It’s the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people’s worst enemy.
We can’t tell if any of those other versions would of been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

A ‘house’ it seems is always a work in progress.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by Peter.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by Peter.

Dear Diane,

you’re welcome. I am glad you felt a little bit lighter while packing up. I also understand it’s a big change for you, and you feel scared of what lies ahead. Do you have a new place picked? Please post whenever you feel the need, I’d love to read more about your journey.

Dear DIANE:

Congratulations for packing today. I hope you have a restful night.

anita

My friend..

All suffering is the effect from attachments to the appearance of the life.

Emotions attachments to objects outside of us. If something begins, means it must end. That is the basic law in the life. End this time or that time is equal.

Try to see from another corner. That is the situation is your cause and effect.

On the time each person must ready to give up everything when the death appears.

Did you think your house will cry for you if you are suddenly not here?

If something is outside you, means it’s not you.

Its not the house that you must give up. It’s the attachment to how you imagined things would be.

Do not waste your time suffering over objects.

Everything in this life is a temporary condition.

You never have what you think you have. What you keep, keeps you!

You must face to face with everything that is or is not in your life. You can not know what trouble may or may not of come from keeping your house. If you can put down your emotional attachments with the object and stop grasping in the past or an imagined future. You will see that the life always moves and changes.

Something ends means something begins.

Must courage to let go. Ready with the movement of the Life.

Otherwise lost time. Waste time. And can not see clearly the new possibilities that will appear.

Sits OK. No Keep = free.

Keep going. Everything will take place.

Dear DIANE:

You are welcome.

“I feel stronger everyday and understand my thoughts, feelings and beliefs about the house come from a deeper place”- can you share a bit about your beliefs in regard to the house and otherwise, in regard to life?

anita

Dear DIANE:

Although I am not a direct recipient of your life work: running a foster care agency and providing therapy to police, first responders and fire fighters (and probably more), I thank you for for helping people in need. You have made the world a better place.

You didn’t share anything about your mother (and that’s okay), but it seems like, maybe, you “spent many, many hours investing blood, sweat and tears into” her, trying to help her, investing in her with no return on your investment.

Maybe the sadness and grieving (“I am so sad.. I am grieving the loss”)  is about the loss of the hope to ever receive a return on your investment of blood, sweat and tears in your mother. When we lose hope for achieving the impossible- there is a relief, a sense of freedom from the compulsion to chase what keeps escaping us.

anita