Tearing Down the old or build the new - you choose

​When I was in my 20s, I periodically helped build houses. I mainly did grunt labor, but there was always something magical about watching a hole in the dirt become something beautiful that a family couldn't wait to move in to.

From time to time, I also had the chance to tear old buildings down. Sometimes it was necessary to create space for something new. Necessary or not, though, nothing ever felt as magical about deconstructing.

Given the choice, I'd choose building a new house over tearing an old one down any day.

I'm not sure I can say the same about my life. Too many days I wake up and head to the construction site where I'm building something brand new - something magical - something I'm excited about - only to find myself drawn back to tearing down the old.

The old demons.

The old relationships.

The old missed opportunities.

One thing I discovered about tearing down old buildings when I worked in construction - that work could get so ugly that no matter how beautiful the house was you were making space for - the energy for tearing down was never as great as the energy I had for building new.

There often wasn't a choice in construction. Sometimes the old just had to be cleared before building something new. An unavoidable pre-requisite. The good thing was, though, once it was cleared, it was gone. It could never take away from my energy for the new project again.

Life isn't that easy some days. We keep going back to the old even though the space is already cleared for the new. But the reality is, in life, the space for new is ALWAYS cleared. It simply requires us to choose where we are going to spend our energy.

Because in life we do get the choice. Tear down the old or build the new.

There is always going to be some need to work on the old. There are renovations and there are total deconstructions. But if we're not careful, we can get to a place in life where we realize we've spent all of our life fighting the old, and we've built nothing new.

We've spent all of our lives tearing our old life down, and never built the life we can't wait to move in to.

In construction, it was nice to have a boss who said, "ok gang, it's time to build something new. Let's do it."

In life, we are our own boss. And for some reason, some days we refuse to give ourselves the order to build something new.

But it's Monday. It's time to hand out orders for the week. Orders to me and to you. It's time to build something new.

So let's do it.