Recently, I was sifting through some housing options, as I have been moving from time to time to look for the best and most feasible habitation for me and my family, spearheading my way through the country.
I stumbled upon this new profession, that requires some level of confidence, but the trick shot here is, it's backed by no real guaranteed harvest, just like life.
I went out to meet my brokers and they were super confident and blitzing. I was surprised and impressed to see and ponder that brokers, especially highly skilled one's can visualize each house and the things in it, upon only a couple of visits.
Good brokers can remember your house tile by tile with it's furnishings, in merely a single visit.
Their memory displays some high speeds of processing power, it's quite a talent I've witnessed.
I had a lot of exchanges with a host of brokers out of which I developed a strange bond of wisdom with each of them. The main broker and my family had the maximum exchange of ideas and worldviews, showing us how tedious life truly is. In a short span of 10 minutes, he possibly had 6 calls to answer, 12 problems to solve, 36 flats to sell. That's a little bit about a broker.
The virtues of patience, confidence, empathy, fair - negotiation are all what makes a good broker, a great one.
Additionally, he also had to solve any issue of his former clients, one of them being us, as we had a hiccup in our paperwork that needed to be solved immediately.
Being the contemplative and private people that we are, we couldn't help but notice the world from outside in.
The sprawling, bolting professions of the world keep you tuned in with physical rewards but truly take a toll, if you're not cut out for the brokerage business or a job of like manner.
I used to think brokers are pointless middlemen, while some of them are, but some are literally the reason you're sitting in a better house than you'd land otherwise on your own, the kind of mutually beneficial deals the broker can creatively cut for all parties involved cannot be underestimated.
Many of them are hustlers, super-hardworking people, roofing many individuals, finding the best mutually beneficial and mutually exclusive deal for all. They invest a lot of their time and energy sometimes thanklessly showing their 30th flat for the day as though it were their first. There's a bunch of sales tactics, negotiations, sometimes promises that can't be kept. But all in all, it's work that requires a lot of resilience and someone who houses the stamina to go on and on.
Some sales close, some don't, some appear as they were on the brink of closing yet doesn't, and another effortlessly closes. All to show us all, there's only One Creator and Supreme Provider in control. It's an easier business if you ecstatically keep showing the next apartment as though it were the 1st one and you're rewarded according to what was meant to be.
It's a profession just like our life, where we can't keep counting the grains of rice while eating them, else we'd all end up hungrier than we started off. It's one of those professions that require strong energy balance and extreme value creation. It's just like our spiritual purpose here. We're supposed to live each day with a smile, expecting nothing, but purposefully chasing the deep end of this pool called life.
Deeper purpose, deeper wisdom and even antithetical to say deeper growth.
A broker is an active, hands-on individual who never stops being excited about the next amalgamation of a physical brick and mortar structure put together.
He's a chaser, he's always hungry for more, a new adventure, never satisfied and never gives up chasing his next target.
An owner is a rather passive consumer, has conviction, he chose the path where we must own something on this earth, but even our bodies are tents here today gone tomorrow. A house is a more perishable structure that we must take heed to before committing to anything permanent. But that being said it doesn't mean we must not be committed and well settled individuals, if you really resonate with a house and have a thought out purpose for it, you must most certainly go ahead with the purchase.
That being said each to his own, and there's no broker without the very conclusive and generous owners, who are super convicted and bold about a decision that cannot be reversed easily. That's another virtue we must develop from the owners who were so great at making up their mind to own particular destined spaces for themselves, that are destined to benefit the brokers, the renters and the owners themselves.
We're all destinies intertwined.
I'm not biased in any way to leasing your next house or owning it.
I just keep getting reality checks of the impermanence of life, the turns it can take, followed by the mindset we exuberate by our choices.
1. The broker lives by his daily bread
2. The owner is well invested in physical structures with a surplus of his money, put out to benefit all parties involved
3. The consumer is the dreamer, a potential owner or leasing party
I learnt a lot from this profession, to recalibrate my own life. 'Cause we're all brokers walking to and fro on this earth, never satisfied, looking for daily bread, selling a dream almost daily, gleaning wisdom and understanding. Learning about how it's all vanity but yet falling in love with the world and its things daily.
For the carnal man, all we have is in the here and now. But a broker is well acquainted with the plushest houses and its things within, he can visualize life with them, it'd be better for some, and not so much of a change for the others.
In my opinion it's a perfect place to know King Solomon's proclamation of the vanity of physical acquisitions but also the instrumental value of it as well.
All these verses beautifully articulated in the Book of Ecclesiastes:
Ecclesiastes 1:1-8
"The words of Koheleth son of David, king in Jerusalem.
Utter futility! —said Koheleth—
Utter futility! All is futile!
What real value is there for a man
In all the gains he makes beneath the sun?
One generation goes, another comes,
But the earth remains the same forever.
The sun rises, and the sun sets—
And glides back to where it rises.
Southward blowing,
Turning northward,
Ever turning blows the wind;
On its rounds the wind returns.
All streams flow into the sea,
Yet the sea is never full;
To the place [from] which they flow
The streams flow back again.
All such things are wearisome:
No man can ever state them;
The eye never has enough of seeing,
Nor the ear enough of hearing."
Ecclesiastes 5:9
"A lover of money never has his fill of money, nor a lover of wealth his fill of income. That too is futile."
Ecclesiastes 5:14-16
"Another grave evil is this: He must depart just as he came. As he came out of his mother’s womb, so must he depart at last, naked as he came. He can take nothing of his wealth to carry with him.
So, what is the good of his toiling for the wind?
Besides, all his days he eats in darkness, with much vexation and grief and anger."
This is what King Solomon, the wealthiest king to ever live, after a deep analysis of life wisely concluded:
Ecclesiastes 5: 17-19
Only this, I have found, is a real good: that one should eat and drink and get pleasure with all the gains he makes under the sun, during the numbered days of life that God has given him; for that is his portion. Also, whenever a man is given riches and property by God, and is also permitted by Him to enjoy them and to take his portion and get pleasure for his gains—that is a gift of God. For [such a man] will not brood much over the days of his life, because God keeps him busy enjoying himself."
Circling back, a broker is almost unemotional when he's presenting a flat to the consumer. But he shares in the enthusiasm with us, mirroring our excitement of our first visit to a beautiful home, possibly destined to be inhabited by us.
Are you a broker or owner?
A broker.
We on this majestic field of energy, as we know the 'earth', we need to remember our time here is synonymous to being a broker. But we need to be the good kind. The one who's serving tirelessly, even though he gets abused, yelled at and not rewarded immediately, and sometimes not rewarded at all.
But he gathers himself like a warrior, smiles through the day, selling the next dream, closing the next sale, enjoying the next meal. You're always on your toes on this earth.
It's all temporary and passing away, so head to the next big meeting, and act like you own the building, but walk away selling the flat.
Me personally, I love real estate but being a broker doesn't fit a writer's mind like mine.
I choose constant thoughts over constant calls.
If there's one thing I'd love to broker, it would be freedom, and a bunch of free people would be my brokerage.
Freedom from bondage and self-sabotage, 'cause my friend, you don't really own anything here, not even your mortal flesh suit, so live in the best houses and don't bother shelling out the big bucks as though you know where life will take you. Don't be so tied down, you lose out on your freedom. Live in every good part of town, and don't bother moving to the next best catch that fits your requirements.
Even your super talented broker would recommend this.
('cause he'll take his brokerage on every one of those homes you hop to)
Broker Calls to Estate Walls
I take you to a house
I present it to you like it's mine
I've sold a couple this week I say
I've rented out nine
The tireless bolting
Chasing the next client
I'm going to close a couple few the next hour
I'm hopeful and defiant
Confidence and hope
I bathe in these
My vision a periscope
We're honey-gathering bees
There's a great deal of sweat
You think it's a walk in the park
Sometimes life's a sunrise flat
Sometimes the trade goes dark
But I find my fix
I have my friends with homes
We've figured houses are nothing but walls,
Tables and some mattress foams
It's all vanity I scream
I'm selling a dream
Life's a cake, enjoy it
Don't compromise on the cream.
(The brokerage)
"Maximize each sale my friend, broker through life, don't forget.
Your brokerage of contentment."
