Some things have been happening to me.

All Good.
All the time, it's good.
I look upon all events that happen to me as an opportunity. Whether someone else observing my life would say that the event was bad or that the event was good, is, well, up to someone else.

I say it's all good, all the time.

However, this does not preclude it from being challenging. Even confronting. But always, ever-expanding.

And often, my knee-jerk reaction is to be angry or frustrated or annoyed or impatient. And then, as soon as I recognize that that's my position, I begin to see there's an opportunity for growth... for me, as an individual. And I begin to see it as an opportunity for everyone around me, for as I grow so do they.

I've recently come up against my property managment company. My apartment building was sold and the new owner employs an Investment Property Management company. They take care of his property for him and they deal with all the tenants. My building has 5 units. It's a small building. And for the most part, the rents were unheard of in Southern California. They were extremely low.

Well, the owner bought the building for a "tad bit" more than the folks who were selling it (seeing as how they bought it more than a decade ago, when real estate prices were much lower). And the owner had to raise the rent to match his mortgage. Understandable. And as my rent didn't get raised, I could've simply gone on not being bothered by the situation. Not a community action, you see, but a peaceful action all the same.

However, even though they did not raise the rent, they still had some questionable actions that seemed to be hostile and aggressive. They gave us all rental agreements and strict rules and regulations, and came in often to make repairs and look at the apartments. Often they scheduled these visits for Saturdays at 8:30am and often they didn't even show up for these scheduled visits. It began to seem as though they were not interested in the people that inhabited the units of this investment property, but only in the fact that this investment property was a property held by their customer.

You may be one of those people that believes in only looking at the "bottom line" and I believe that that is a valid way of being in the world - only attentive to the "bottom line" money-wise. I just get that it's not always the productive way of living life in this world.

What do I mean?

Well, I mean this. You can look at the bottom line and think that it ends after all the costs have been deducted from the profit margin. Or you could see it this way:

That there are more costs than the ones written in ink below the profit margin. That there are costs to your heart, mind and soul that often people don't take into account in their "bottom lines".

The bottom-most line is the one that is tallied when you're about to leave this world and you realize that when you could've loved, you opted for the reasoning of "the bottom line".

Being a cynic goes much further than some of us are willing to reckon with. And loving goes much further than some of us are willing to reckon with.

When we don't take each other into account for our fear of losing something material, we lose something of ourselves spiritually.

And the inverse, in this particular situation, my situation, is true as well. I did not take into account, at first, that these folks at the Investment Property Management company are human beings with dreams and fears the same as me. I was forsaking their humanity for my fear that they were forsaking mine.

I took on that we can build a partnership of value - the value that's important to them. Because while the things that they hold dear, like the property value and the "bottom line", are not as important to me, I can make them important to me. And the reason I would choose this?

Because those people, their hearts and their minds and their souls, are important to me. They are me and I am them. And for me to forsake them simply because it seems that they are doing harm to me, is not how I want to live my life.

So I'm going to stand for what's important to them. I'm going to take it on like it's as special to me as it is to them. And I have let them know that this is what's so.

It will take proof for them to alter how they think of me, and I'm up for the challenge.

This challenge, this time, is mine to take on. It's time for me to be fully aligned with what I tell each and every one of you here.

Life is but a choice. Choose powerfully.