I recently read an article in the January/February North End
Metro Magazine called Forgiving the Unforgiven written by Ken Karlberg. As you
can expect, it was about forgiveness or rather the consequences of not granting
forgiveness. The article starts out with a story “as a young boy, age 5 or 6, I
used to play in the local woods where the soil was mostly clay and the clay
would stick to my ‘shoes,’ the farther that I walked, the longer that I played,
the heavier the build-up of clay. Eventually, the burden became more work than
joy and I would head home.” He went on to share, “I was literally an inch or
two taller as I walked because I did not think to knock the clay from the
bottom of my shoes.” So as I was reading the article I began to think that life
is kind of like that clay. I guess to better summarize my thought on this is
that we trudge around life, picking up stuff…stuff from other people, stuff
from society, stuff from church…just a lot of stuff. And it adds up, building
over time until it just becomes too much. A few paragraphs into the article,
sure enough…there’s my thoughts written on paper. “We are all carrying the
heavy burden of life’s accumulation of clay on our feet.”
This is the first time I have read someone’s interpretation
of life’s stuff as clay, usually we call it baggage. I like the notion that
baggage is heavy, that clay is heavy. Both are equally excellent analogies for
life, or more specifically the parts of life we cling to and have trouble
shaking off. Our childhood memories, things people have said to us, the way
people have treated us, reactions to things we have done and said…it all stays
with us, some more than others. We all have baggage, the only difference is how
light or heavy each of us pack. If you go with the analogy of acquiring layers
of clay, then how often do you shake your shoes off, or do you ever shake your
shoes off?
With the baggage, are you carrying around your own or have
you picked up someone else’s in the
mistaken belief that it’s yours? Sometimes when we stay in one place, life can
turn into the luggage carousel at the airport. We stand and wait, and wait…then
thinking we see our luggage, we pick up what we think is ours and start to move
on. But sometimes, yes I know we have all done it…started walking away with
what we think is ours, but really it belongs to someone else. Sometimes we
notice right away and put it back, sometimes we move on only to discover the
mistake later…still other times we are too proud to turn around and put the
luggage back on the carousel for fear of looking stupid. Either way, the end
result is that we take more than we should. Stuffs that aren’t ours to carry
about on our journey in this life, sometimes we spend so much time convincing
ourselves that this extra crap is ours that we lose sight of what we really
need. Want. Deserve. We get tired. Exhausted.
We start to see the world from a skewed perspective…buried
under the weight of all that we carry. So at some point we can’t see what’s
really there, and that’s when things go really bad. Our minds start to create a
world that doesn’t exist, we become victims of our circumstances and believe
what we see, is how the world really is. That’s when our inner demons come out
to play…when we are tired, weak, overburdened, and feeling alone. They torment
us with thoughts of how we should be, what we should look like, the way our
lives are supposed to be going. They make us compare ourselves to others. But
it’s not even a fair comparison…we begin comparing our worst traits, our
biggest mistakes with what we THINK we see from others. Remember our vision is
skewed by all the luggage/baggage that we carry, and it’s not even all ours. I
read a saying on Facebook that I think is perfect for what I’m trying to
explain, “don’t compare your B roll to someone else’s A roll.” As a
photographer, that analogy makes perfect sense to me. You can actually take it
one step further…forget roll A and B…don’t compare any undeveloped roll to one
that’s fully developed.
We are all a work in progress. Some further along than
others. Our journey is specific to each and every one of us, yet we cling to
the idea that we must be as good or “normal” as those around us. We all need to
stop walking around with layers of clay on our shoes. We all need to stop
carrying all the baggage. Just stop. Put it down. If it has your name on it,
only take the necessary items that make you, you. Pack lightly. And if it
doesn’t have your name on it, leave it behind…it is not yours to carry.
