Some years ago my children and I were learning about assets and liabilities and it was fun.
Why?
Because we were using games made by the rich dad company. We all learned that assets were investments that simply put money back in your pocket! And liabilities did the opposite. For argument sake, say you mortgaged a house and lived in it without renting it out for extra or residual income, would that be an asset or a liability?
This question plagued me for a long time as you would agree with me following the asset definition that property is an asset- rich type of investment with huge potential gains. If a buyer were living in their own mortgaged house and were working to pay off their debt without actually realising additional income from it to pay off its loan, it would appear that in someone else’s accounting book it might be classed as an asset; maybe the lender’s?
It would actually look very different if they were renting parts of the house to cover the expenses for the mortgage, right? I would imagine in that case it might sit on a different side of the accounting equation.
So it is with ideas. There are good and bad ideas.
I have heard people say, I don’t know what to do with my life. Others talk about big plans they have, then talk themselves out of achieving them. I can really relate to both situations. For a good long time, I changed careers and jobs, trying out this and that until I felt I hit a stop! I had a intervention. My life was called to attention and the word community’s constantly plagued my mind. It would come to me in increasing ways and I would dismiss it. I was not ready at that time to give up a highly stressful role to turn my energy towards the community. So it had to happen in a way beyond my control. So the role came to an end. Another opened up and finished a year later in the same month. Then I almost had this compelling interest in creating a project to help the community that I could not shake off. It felt right somehow. Initially I resisted this new path, complaining that I did not know where it would lead, but as I stayed the path, it yielded more rewards….
You have to believe that there’s more to life than getting a job and earning lots of money or winning the lottery. It seems the rat race predicament is no longer as satisfying as media and the world around portrays. The fascination with Social media also helps create an illusion of friendships, community and provides many opportunities to portray a life that is far from real.
Maybe you have become accustomed to alerts, notifications, beeps and so on. I find it is becoming more challenging to be still. To stop. Not long ago, I used to say under my breath, “stop the world I want to get off!” It felt like the globe was spinning too fast out of my control.
I am consciously looking for ‘me time’, a moment when I can switch off from gadgets, stimulation from things around me, just to get away, and be in the moment.
It’s at times like this that ideas come. They float in my mind, bring solutions to challenges and rest in the memory. I am getting into the habit of writing these down as I have dismissed too many of them in the past.
In the stillness of time
When mind and body rhyme
With creation in line
And thoughts bide their time
Let me find the peace
That brings so much ease
So that as I live
I am able to clearly see
The path carved for me
Come to reality.
Copyright ©Arinola 2018
Arinola Araba 