Just when we thought all our endless hours waiting on phone calls from estate agents were over…..we now find ourselves at the end of another long day of waiting to hear from the agent who is handling the sale of our house in Derby.
We had pretty much given up on the idea that we would sell the house any time soon – it has been on the market since last April and in all that time, only three people have viewed it. However, maybe it’s a case of third time lucky. The last couple to view it have made an (extraordinarily low) offer, and after a weekend of mulling over the situation, and working out what is the minimum amount we can survive on over the next three years, we rang the agent this morning with a response (which was higher than the offer made, but still a massive drop on the current asking price, which is already a big drop on last April’s asking price).
We are trying not to dwell on all the many and varied If Only thoughts that spring to mind so easily when large sums of money are involved, and to concentrate on what we need rather than what we want, or what we thought we might get.
The hardest part for me is that the house has been my home for 19 years. My children grew up in it and it is full of memories. To me it is so much more than just a house – or an ‘asset’ that must be sold to realise some capital to fund our current life. I had always hoped that, as a much-loved family home, it would somehow stay in our family, and become a home for my son’s or daughter’s future families-to-be. And although I recognize that such a hope is utterly unrealistic, I can’t help feeling a little hurt that the prospective purchasers are so clearly buying with their heads, rather than their hearts.
As Simon has pointed out, I not only buy houses with my heart – I also sell them that way. Whilst he can be objective about the matter, and see the whole thing in terms of what makes financial sense, I find myself wishing that we could find a family to buy the house who would love it as much as I have. I need to feel that it is ‘going to a good home’.
It is worth more to me than money, and it is worth more to me than it would be to probably anyone who is currently in the market to buy a house. And my son, who is still living in it at the moment, really, really, REALLY doesn’t want to have to move out of the house he has lived in for pretty much all of his rememberable life.
But we have both got to learn to Let Go, and here, for the benefit of my slow-learning mind, comes yet another lesson in Non-Attachment.
The art of living does not consist in preserving and clinging to a particular mode of happiness, but in allowing happiness to change its form without being disappointed by the change: happiness, like a child, must be allowed to grow up.
Charles Morgan
