The Heavy Burden Of Our Lives

“How much does a life weigh? Imagine for a moment that you were carrying a backpack. I want you to feel the straps on your shoulders.

Do you feel them

Now I want you to fill your backpack with all the things that you carry in your life. Start with what’s on the shelves and drawers, and the little bits and pieces you collect. You will notice how the weight increases.

Now the bigger things: clothes, small household appliances, lamps, towels, the television. And the backpack is already very heavy. And now even bigger things: the sofa, the bed, a table …

Put everything in: the car, the house or the apartment. I want you to pack all of this in your backpack. Try to go now. Difficult right?

Well, this is exactly what we do with our lives every day. We walk completely overloaded until we can no longer move. And make no mistake: to move means to live.

And now I’m going to set fire to this backpack. What do you want to save beforehand? The photos? Photos are for people who can’t remember. Take gasoline and burn it. Or go further and let everything burn up and imagine you wake up in the morning with nothing. That is stimulating, doesn’t it?

(…)

You have another backpack. Only this time you should fill it with people. You can start with your acquaintances: with friends of friends, colleagues from the office, etc. Then move on to the people to whom you can entrust your secrets: your cousins, uncles and aunts, your siblings, parents and finally your husband or your wife, boyfriend or girlfriend.

Put all of these people in your backpack. Feel the weight of the backpack. I can assure you that interpersonal relationships are the heaviest burden in your life. Don’t you feel the weight on your shoulders All these negotiations, discussions, secrets and commitments … you don’t have to burden yourself with that.

Why don’t you just leave the backpack behind? There are animals that spend their entire lives in symbiosis with others. Unhappy lovers, monogamous swans. We are not these animals. If we move slowly, we die quickly. We’re not swans, we’re sharks. “

From: Up in the air

Our backpack is full of stones of all sizes, small, medium and large. I like emptying the backpack every now and then, but it always fills up very quickly. That’s life. It’s really hard to save what’s in there, choose what to love and what not, what is fleeting, and what helps or doesn’t help us get better.

We all carry stones, pebbles and rocks in our emotional backpack. We are used to carrying the backpack while it is unnecessarily full to the brim. If you’ve thought about what slows you down when you want to give in to an impulse, you should take a look inside your backpack. Most likely you will find the answer to the question there.

Even if you can’t see what makes the backpack so heavy, I bet you feel something stressful when you think about it. Perhaps it is full of guilt, confrontations, emotional addiction, high expectations, demands, frustration. Of all the things that chain us and prevent us from moving forward.

We also carry a backpack full of the absence of loved ones we have lost. How do we empty this backpack that makes us miss? This is actually difficult, especially when we accuse ourselves of something that has no solution anyway.

If you look through your bag, you will likely notice that much of the weight you are carrying was not even packed by yourself. They are small and large stones that other people have placed in your past: their fears, frustrations, and their rigidity.

It is likely that you have also packed toxic feelings in your backpack, created by anger, fear, intense sadness, anxiety, prejudice, etc. All of these are heavy tiles that will not come off you and therefore influence your decisions and behavior.

Undoubtedly this burden is the hardest to bear, it is so complex and weighty that we even sometimes surprise ourselves by asking for help because the burden is pushing us into the mud and we are unable to break away from it .

Carrying the backpack to the tip is self-sabotage, it is really frightening. I wonder what is happening to us, why we hold onto memories so much, the bad things that life offers us, the toxic people. Only one answer comes to mind: the fear of letting go.

The load in the backpack and the fear of letting go

There are cases when we are fully aware of what is paralyzing us and choking our energy, but still we are unable to open and unpack our backpack to make it lighter. What is happening to us there?

Well, with each of the heavy stones we have a sense of identity and belonging, in other words, they are part of us (even if it is of course an undesirable part). Sometimes we think that if we break away from this part, we would also break away from what defines us or what we failed at.

It is common to feel that if we endure a little more, we will lose ourselves and others. It seems like we would be terribly selfish persons if we refuse to keep that partner, friend, or relative in our backpacks. This seems pretty contradictory when you think about it like that, doesn’t it?

I would define the fear of letting go as an emotional dizziness. This is nothing more than fear in its pure state. It is the fear of facing the emptiness created by loss. It’s the fear of pain through loss, fear of love through devotion, fear of our weakness because of our masochism.

In these difficulties, we behave cruelly to ourselves. How much more do you think you can load on your back? There is no point in your life turning into a path of suffering, especially when you know that there is only one way in life.

Perhaps you feel like emptying your backpack a little more when I tell you that this is then a space in which only what is really important remains of the negative and positive for you. Leave gaps in your strengths because they are your wings: take on your mistakes, prove your intentions and commitments, increase your enthusiasm and banish what disturbs your well-being, like the emotional vampires.

For the good of your back, get rid of your bad feelings and toxic people because they really are fatal. Remember that in our metaphor, they are able to dry up the flow in you without even trying to help you.

It’s just about us stopping every now and then to check the contents of our backpack and get rid of the negative and unnecessary. It’s about being aware that what we do is heavily influenced by what we carry in our backpacks and that it is of paramount importance that we regularly embark on a new journey with updated equipment.

Images courtesy of Larissa Kulik and Annette Shaff