Just Put it Down

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.