Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas
Is living a fight for territory? The full quote is, “Life is a fight for territory and once you stop fighting for what you want, what you don’t want will automatically take over.” I think this is true and if you grew up in a household with lots of siblings we were all fighting for territory, for our place, our niche. Maybe we were the funny one, the dependable one, the level-headed one, the smart one, the troubled one, the sick one, the healthy one, the complaining one, the happy one, the smiling one, or we found another niche.
Then we get out into the world and we are finding our place again. How many of us have been to a gathering of some type and one person takes all the air in the room. They have all the jokes; they are the loudest and most boisterous. We might not like to be the loudest jerk in the room but doesn’t our voice raise when we think we are not being listened to, we are not heard, and we are not acknowledged.
When we were in the dating world we were fighting for territory. My sister tells me when she watched her husband walk into the singles group she was a member of she said, “Ladies, he’s mine.” She staked a claim and they have been married for years.
Maybe when we claim things as ours it is easier to get what we want. What do we want? Maybe we haven’t voiced what we want and that is why we don’t have it. If we stake a claim we then need to do something with that claim. We can register our business but that is the easy part. Building a business is a challenge, but staking our claim, declaring our intent, and then going after it and doing what needs to be done will get us where we want to go. We need to know where we want to go all through life. If we quit setting a goal, quit working toward what we want we may have to settle for what we don’t want.
I don’t think this means we should always be striving and not enjoying the beauty and bounty of our lives. I think it means we should be making things better in our lives in every way we can while we enjoy the beauty and bounty.
The spring bulbs are up under my crabapple tree which should be in full glorious bloom this weekend. If I don’t keep planting new bulbs my spring flowers get sparser and sparser. I used to have crocuses but they have died out. If I want crocuses or any other spring flower I will have to plant them. The beautiful garden doesn’t just happen and nor does a beautiful life, family, marriage, business, or great accomplishment of any kind.
Life does not stand still. Where there is no progress, there is disintegration. Grenville Kleiser
Staying healthy as we age is definitely a fight for territory. If we don’t exercise our body ages at a faster rate, we feel more aches and pains, and we have more health problems.
Some people may laugh at the idea of living our best life. But when we say we are living our best life, we are staking our claim and then we have to do what it takes to make that happen. If we aren’t staking our claim we get what we get. Too many days of not staking our claim of going for a walk may mean we are not able to walk as far, we are stiff after our walk, or we can’t move as freely in our day-to-day life.
If we don’t stake our claim for eating healthy food, we won’t be healthy as we make choices that are not good for our health. Doctors are great for the things they can do for us but they cannot make us healthy. We have to do that for ourselves.
We have to stake the claim in our relationships that we will expect the best of ourselves. We will overlook our partner’s missteps and they will overlook ours. Too many missteps on either side won’t create a good marriage but nor will holding our partner to standards that normal people can’t attain. We can have such great expectations for our children they feel no matter what they do it won’t be good enough. We need to stake the claims for our own life and let others stake the claims for theirs.
Are we fighting for the territory in life we want? Is it true there is no standing still there is only going up or sliding down?
There are many ways of going forward, but there is only one way of standing still. Franklin D. Roosevelt
Marriages either move toward communication, connection and intimacy or they move away from these things – they don’t stand still for very long. Unknown
Self-development should be a perpetual process. In life you are either growing or rotting. You’re moving forward or backwards; there is no standing still. Al Duncan
Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you will come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.
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