Unused Assets and Useless Perceptions
Use it and lose it.
Before we purchased our wood stove, Del prepared a massive stack of wood to last us through the winter. Our original intent was to buy a wood stove that took 18-inch logs. However, when we couldn’t find that size, we ended up with one that took 16-inch logs.
This meant that if we wanted to use them, every single log had to have 2 inches cut off. We had a few choices: ignore the problem and let the logs rot out in the yard, or face the problem and cut off those two inches.
We chose what often appears to be the more challenging path: re-cut every log.
We all can make this choice about assets that don’t quite work in our lives.
Instead of letting them rot away or be buried within ourselves, why not make them usable?
Often, those assets, gifts, and talents are buried beneath the trash of useless perceptions, perceptions that possibly once helped us in our lives but no longer do.
One time, I rode in a parade—in a garbage truck, throwing candy and tee shirts at the crowd. People laughed at us sitting on the back of a garbage truck. Who wants to think about yucky garbage?
But what if we didn’t have garbage trucks? What if we collected garbage in our houses and yards and lived with it?
We all know we must toss the current trash and periodically de-clutter our homes to live happily.
But what about the garbage in our minds?
How often do we examine what we believe and question if it is true?
This examination can be done with two simple questions.
First, we ask ourselves if what we believe is true in small r reality.
Is it true in our daily lives, or are we seeing it from a missed or false perception?
For example, here are some beliefs we all have tucked away somewhere.
Is it true that you are not loved?
Is it true that you have never been happy?
Is it true that you are not taken care of?
When you tell the truth to yourself, you will notice that there is always evidence that you are loved, no matter how small that evidence may seem. Something has made you smile, and you are indeed taken care of, beginning with the air provided for you to breathe.
The second question is whether it is True within the big R Reality.
Is it True based on the facts of an omnipresent intelligence of Good?
You will notice many unused assets and trash perceptions when you answer these two questions truthfully.
If what you have believed is not true, or True, then let’s get down to the necessary tasks of readjusting our perceptions and trashing those we no longer need.
Knowing that chopping and trashing are two actions that set us free from the misperception disease we have caught from our worldview, let’s get to it.
I have one more symbol for you.
We built a deck for our home, with doors that open from our bedroom. It was our dream, and my mom gave us the money to do it as a thank-you for some work I did for her.
However, even with that gift of opportunity, it still took action to build the deck. Del and his son worked hard to make the deck. I shoved stones underneath it.
All gifts come with a choice.
Be grateful and get to work using it, or complain about the work it takes to use it.
Chore or delight, it’s our choice of perception in everything we do, whether recovering and repairing unused assets, throwing out the trash, or doing the work necessary to have what we want.
Why not choose delight?
There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting. —Buddha