LIFE FOR RENT

 
A few years back, I was listening to music while driving. Dido’s “Life for Rent” began playing, and I was struck by the synchronicity. The song came to my attention, during a period when I was thinking a lot about the buying and selling of homes, with all of the attendant implications. Slowly, over the next several days, my inner dialogue and the resonance of Dido’s words began to merge into an allegory for living, and subsequently developed into the focus of this reflection. 
 
"Life For Rent"
​
I haven't ever really found a place that I call home
I never stick around quite long enough to make it
I apologize once again I'm not in love
But it's not as if I mind
that your heart ain't exactly breaking
 
It's just a thought, only a thought
 
But if my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine
 
I've always thought
that I would love to live by the sea
To travel the world alone
and live more simply
I have no idea what's happened to that dream
Cos there's really nothing left here to stop me
 
It's just a thought, only a thought
 
But if my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine
 
If my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine
 
While my heart is a shield and I won't let it down
While I am so afraid to fail so I won't even try
Well how can I say I'm alive
 
If my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine
 
If my life is for rent and I don't learn to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine
 
During my adult life, I’ve lived in many flats, and owned two homes. A number of years ago, I went from being a homeowner to living in an apartment again. Renting and owning have each held their particular appeal for me, for different reasons.
 
At times, apartment living can be far more preferable than being a homeowner. As a renter, I am afforded a certain amount of mobility. When I live in an apartment, there is an undeniable sense of freedom. If the landlord turns out to be a jerk, if a live-in relationship falls apart, or a job-offer leads to a new city, I can pick up and go with relative ease; nothing is hindering me from moving on. As a tenant, other than general care and cleaning, there is little or no maintenance required of me, and I can generally rely on the landlord to tend to the grounds and fix what ails my apartment.
 
These exemplify some of the assets to being a leaseholder, but there are also things about it that I don’t enjoy. Foremost, is that I am required to live by somebody else’s rules. I am beholden to the “establishment”, and there is always a list of thou shalt not’s that comes with signing a rental contract.
 
Perhaps more important still, there is no equity in renting, no investment made each month when I write my check. I receive the monthly bill, but the landlord receives the major benefit.
 
Surely, living the life of a homeowner also has its highlights and drawbacks. As with anything, it all depends on your perspective. For example, the initial outlay of a down payment, holding a mortgage, or paying property and school taxes can be daunting prospects for many. For some, the constant upkeep of home and yard is undesirable. There is an endless flow of maintenance required to keep a home in good condition.
 
So what is it about homeownership that has so many clamoring for it? If the rewards were not great, would it be held as such a strong goal for so many, would it be considered a cornerstone of living the “American Dream’?
 
To be in possession of a home can provide great satisfaction for those fortunate enough to have made that dream come true. Pride in ownership often out ways the impact of the punch list posted on the fridge. Great fulfillment can be found in creating a cozy nest for one’s family, and an inviting place for gathering friends. There is also the value of stability, having a sense of grounding as one puts down roots, and being a part of a larger community.
 
These dynamics speak to the idea of commitment, of taking responsibility, and investing not only money, but also time and effort to create a supportive environment that will nurture the growth of self and family.
 
Now, I find it very interesting that in the symbolic realm of Dreams, a house or home represents one’s self and/or soul, both the physical and the spiritual aspects of one’s existence. In dreams, the rooms of the home refer to various parts of the self. For example, the attic symbolizes the intellect, and the basement, the subconscious.
 
Not so long ago, we experienced a “Housing Crisis” or what was termed a “Housing Bubble, “ which, is typically characterized by rapid increases in the assessment of homes, until levels are reached that are unsustainable relative to incomes. This is then followed by plummeting home prices that find many owners in a position of having negative equity—which is to say, they have a mortgage debt higher than the value of their property.
 
So, how do these circumstances reflect our lives in a larger sense? Well, if we examine more closely the relative state of the current housing market, we may begin to see that metaphorically, the macrocosm mirrors the microcosm. It has become increasingly evident that as individuals, and collectively as a society, we too are in a crisis of body and soul.
 
It is as if we are embroiled in a drama of epic proportions. Like Oedipus Rex, in the Greek Tragedy by Sophocles, we are the cause of our own undoing. In the course of this classic play, the viewer comes to understand how the plague that has infected the city of Thebes is a metaphor for the internal state of the King. His figurative blindness, which, ironically, the blind seer, Tireseas, brings to light, and his inability to “Know Thyself,” along with his hubris, or excessive pride, are, ultimately, what lead to his fall from Grace.
 
Gnothi Seauton- “Know Thyself” and Maden Agon- “Nothing in Excess” flank the proneos, or forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. The ancient Greeks held these two tenets as paramount to maintaining a balance in self and society.
 
This metaphor of the “state of the state” is also seen in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. During the medieval period the sovereign was often referred to by the name of the country. So when Marcellus, a sentinel, expresses that, “…something is rotten in the state of Denmark…,” he is insinuating that the state is decaying because the King is corrupt. Analogously, the disintegration of our housing market may be viewed as symbolic of our internal states as individuals.
 
Practically speaking, we are currently putting out more than we are taking in… In a society where leveraging buyouts and hedging ones bets are the norm, the market value now placed on our homes has far outreached their true worth, because we have fallen into the trap of “living beyond our means.” Individually, we face the same plight, because our moral and spiritual bank accounts are languishing…
 
Metaphorically, we are all homeowners, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we are being good stewards of what we possess. We’ve all been witness to homes in various states of disrepair, with overgrown lawns and gardens. We see detritus piled high on front porches, and spilling out of garages. Even if the home looks pristine on the outside, and the yard is immaculate, that doesn’t ensure the interior reflects the same, or that there is actually anything of substance on the inside. The same might be said for us. How do we outwardly reflect our internal lives?
 
This anecdote highlights the insidious problem of living beyond one’s means, and more poignantly, underscores the root cause of our physical and spiritual dilemma.
 
Family friends have a huge house a couple of blocks away. They drive two late model Mercedes Benz, she has a Cartier watch encrusted with diamonds... yet their house, according to one contractor, is "one snowstorm short of falling apart." It's completely empty inside, devoid of furniture - see as long as the flower planter is the biggest on the street no one realizes you can't afford to furnish the place…. But remember people, life in the Village is all about showing and not telling.
 
Like this family, so many of us have finally maxed out our resources, and are now in the midst of circumstances that will undoubtedly alter the way we function as a society. Should we choose to, however, we can use this crisis as an opportunity to create significant change within ourselves. It is no wonder we find ourselves in this predicament, as our value as individuals in this culture, according to documentarian, Annie Leonard, “is currently measured and demonstrated by how much we consume.”
 
She goes on to explain in her short film, The Story of Stuff (see the video attached at the end of this post) that there was a key shift in our attitude toward consumption, after World War II, because Industry wanted to perpetuate the wartime economic boom. Noted retail analyst of the time, Victor Le Beau articulated a notion that has become the standard for how our market functions, and underscores the source of this crisis of self and society.
 
He said, "Our enormously productive economy...demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption.... We need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate."
 
So it could be argued, then, that a major contributing factor to the critical “state of our state” is an inordinate level of dissatisfaction, rooted in our individual egos and spiritual selves. But how have we come to be so dissatisfied, and more importantly, what can we do about it?
 
Le Beau’s thesis points to the origin of our current condition. Far too many of us have lost our ability to find personal and spiritual satisfaction apart from our ability to acquire stuff. Many of us lack the resources and the tools to find contentment in our daily existence, or to plumb the depths of our spiritual nature.
 
Our rituals have come to include going to the mall, happy hour, acquiring the latest version of the new “it” item, serial dating, “reality” TV, surfing the net, and curating and posting the content of our lives for all the world to see. These things, in and of themselves, are not necessarily bad. Though, they do become detrimental, when they are used as distraction from the immediacy of our experience, or a substitute meant to fill a deeply felt void. That void, I would venture to say, is a spiritual one.
 
We feed our bellies, our wallets, and our addictions, because we have forgotten how to feed our souls. We have mortgaged our mega Mc-Mansions on tree-lined streets, in our gated communities, but they are barren, devoid of spirit, on the inside. It seems these outsized fortresses now serve as symbols of our own inner-lives. They function as armor, as shields to protect us, not from the outside world but from ourselves.
 
In his book “We”, Robert A. Johnson, acclaimed Jungian Analyst, states that “… Westerners don’t really believe that we can experience…our spiritual life … while pursuing our ordinary daily lives on earth. It is hard for us to think of the two worlds, inner and outer, coexisting simultaneously in one human being. This is why we always try to embody the divine world in something or someone else outside ourselves.”
 
So it is, then, that we now pay homage to the Almighty Dollar, celebrities, and our manufactured mythologies of romantic love. These have become the focus of our adoration. They receive our worship and our reverence. Not our Self, not our soul…
 
Johnson goes on to say:
 
“Worse yet, some of us…simply don’t believe in the inner world; therefore, whatever we do with that unlived side of ourselves has to be unconscious, has to be projected out into the physical world…We talk of “soul” and “spirit,” but we don’t really believe in them. Over the centuries we have lost contact with the inner life and with its symbolism, as our culture has turned ever more literal and materialist.”
 
As a result, many in our Western culture only accept as reality what is tangible, that which can be perceived with our five senses. The rest, we feel, is all illusion. Conversely, many Eastern cultures believe that the physical world that surrounds us is illusory- that only the spiritual realm is real.
 
In Hindu myth, Maya is the goddess, who choreographs the dance of illusion, weaving an ethereal veil suspended between our human existence and reality, warping our perception of what is. It is often said that the purpose of practicing yoga or meditation is to “see through the veil of maya,” or illusion, to get to the heart of what is.
 
Jung believed, according to Johnson, that illusion is neither the inner world of the psyche, nor is it outer physical existence, but, rather, illusion is a distorted relationship between the two. We take what belongs in the realm of our psyche or soul self and we project it onto things outside of us. The homage we pay our possessions or to our romantic partners should be returned to its rightful place, to the Divine within us, and to the vessel that holds it.
 
It is safe to say that most of us readily accept we are physical beings. We are of the earth, made of flesh and bone, with drives, desires, passions and instincts. To our detriment, though, we are afraid of, or worse yet, reject out of hand, our spiritual complement. In so doing, we deny our self and others the benefit of our birthright, the Love, Light and Life Force that imbues us.
 
As human beings, we have the capacity to exhibit the full spectrum of emotions and actions of which our species is capable. That is not to say it is always appropriate or advantageous to do so. However, should we deny or disown the elements of our inner life, or the parts of our soul self that we construe as negative, should we reject or suppress what Carl Jung called our shadow self, or the unlived parts of our psyche, it will, inevitably, manifest somewhere else in our life. Try as we may, it will not be held down for long, and it will eventually rear its head in far more destructive ways, than had we acknowledged its existence all along with compassion and acceptance. 
 
We may then project these unclaimed aspects of our self onto others, attributing our own fallibility, or worse yet, the greater aspects of our self, to others - friends, family, even our enemies. More often than not, however, we wind up thrusting them on the ones we hold dearest. In doing so, we clearly do our self and our loved ones a grave disservice. We endow and empower them with what we should rightfully claim as our own, both our positive and negative attributes.
 
We mistakenly confuse our inner life with the outer. We see the physical world refracted through the lens of our own inner distorted impressions. As Saint Paul so keenly observed, “Now we see as through a glass, darkly.” Maya’s veil of illusion is obscuring what is real.
 
So how do we rectify this distortion of reality? It comes back to taking ownership. Do we want to be mere renters or the owners of our life? We can choose to go through our days living the life of a leasee, living in fear of making commitments, picking up and moving on to the next thing, when we become disenchanted with our current situation, allowing others to be in control of our destiny, unwilling, or unable to make a true investment in our life, or we can make the choice, and take the risk to begin the process of nourishing and tending to both our outer and our inner existence.
 
We can begin this process simply by be willing to own all of our experience, in all its complexity, accepting it with reverence, excluding nothing. We can make the effort to embrace life utterly, with all its triumphs and tragedies, all its rewards and responsibilities. The great spiritual teacher, Ram Dass, so wisely shares that “we have to enter into life fully, in order to be free”.
 
Living a full life means not only inhabiting our daily existence. Were we only to focus on the mundane, we would find our self greatly out of harmony. The imbalance many of us are experiencing currently is the result of our neglect of our inner life. In order to be healthy, whole human beings, we must awaken to our spiritual life and inhabit it with equal conviction.
 
Taking ownership of our own destiny begins by making the effort to truly claim our life, to accept, without judgment, each experience and every aspect of our self with open arms. This requires unabashed courage.
 
The first rule I ever learned during my improvisational theatre training was to respond to anything that was offered with a resounding “Yes, and…. In essence, what this means is I accept what is given me, and I then work with it in a creative way to move a scene forward. The most challenging thing about saying “yes” is that it means we take everything, without exception, that life hands us.
 
That doesn’t mean we should accept things blindly, that we need stay in jobs that are demoralizing, or that we should remain in relationships or habits of mind and behavior that are destructive. What it does mean, rather, is that we take responsibility for our situation, and acknowledge that we always have a choice. We can take the wheel and become the master of our destiny, or we can remain in the passenger seat, living a life not of our design.
 
Taking control can be a difficult challenge for us, because more often than not, our habitual reaction to life is to say “No, but…”, the antithesis of forward motion. The response “No” inevitably stops life in its tracks. It dams up the flow of energy, or creative  life force, and everything comes to a screeching halt.
 
We have the tendency to say no to the things that break with the status quo, that require us to change our current modes of thinking and behaving, and we say yes to those that allow us to continue on our tried and tested paths, even if we are spinning our wheels in ever deepening ruts. Yet, every experience we encounter creates our life. Denying or negating any of them won’t make them go away. They will continue to resurface, until we muster the courage to face them head on.
 
If we can’t or won’t take the risk to face both our inner and outer fears, or to meet the challenges of the spiritual and physical realms, then we are merely renters of our life; we do not truly own it. Are we worth the risk and commitment it will take to make a lasting change of value?
 
Moreover, what can we do, in practical terms, to begin to claim full stewardship of our life? I believe we need to start by changing our rituals, by replacing those that are soul suppressing with ones that are soul sustaining.
 
There are many paths to ownership, and it may be overwhelming to think that we have to change our whole way of doing things. So as not to throw us into shock, we begin with small steps. We pick one aspect of our life we’ve neglected or that has become out of balance and we begin there. Slowly, but deliberately, we start to change the patterns, erase the tapes; clear some space to receive the new.
 
How can we create some new rituals in our life? Perhaps, we begin by becoming physically active, if our life has become sedentary. We may spend an hour a week cleaning out the clutter in our house, remembering that the outer reflects the inner. We can clean out the clutter in our head, by spending an hour with our therapist, or an hour in Nature, or both. Treating our self regularly to some soul affirming activity, an “Artist’s Date”, as Julia Cameron refers to them, like visiting a museum or going to a concert is a nurturing, soul affirming act. Taking up a contemplative practice, like meditation, qigong or yoga supports our inner awakening to Spirit. We may begin to eat a more holistic diet, or jettison an unhealthy habit of body or mind.
 
Regardless of what it is, say, “ Yes”! By making an intention to change, we can create a supportive nurturing environment for the growth of our self and our soul. With this first step, we can begin the often arduous, but ever rewarding journey toward wholeness, as we integrate both the physical and spiritual aspects of our being. The Universe will support us, our friends and family, and our colleagues and lovers will support us…
 
“For, as Robert Johnson quotes in his book “We”, “…deep within each of us rises a “castle of white marble; at each of its thousand windows burns a lighted candle; at each a minstrel plays and sings a melody without end.” To find that wondrous palace we must look neither to things, to another person, nor to the other side of the grave, but within ourselves.”