The Weight Of Our Life

How much do their lives weigh? Imagine for a second that you are carrying a backpack. I want you to notice the straps on the shoulders, do you notice them?

Now I want you to fill it with all the things that you have in your life. Start with the ones on the shelves and drawers, the nonsense you collect. Notice how the weight accumulates. 

Now bigger things: clothes, small appliances, lamps, towels, the TV. The backpack already weighs. Now, bigger things: the sofa, the bed, a table …

Put everything inside: the car, the house, a studio or a two-bedroom apartment. I want them to put all that inside the backpack. Try to walk. It is difficult right?

Well, this is what we do with our life on a daily basis. We get overloaded until we can’t even move. And make no mistake, to move is to live.

Now I’m going to set that backpack on fire. What do you want to get out? The pictures? The photos are for people who can’t remember, take gas and burn them. What’s more, let it all burn out and imagine waking up tomorrow with nothing. It’s exhilarating, isn’t it? 

(…)

They have another backpack. Only this time they must fill it with people. You can start it with your acquaintances: friends of friends, the people at the office, and then move on to the people you trust with your secrets: your cousins, uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, your parents, and finally, your husband or his wife, his boyfriend or his girlfriend.

Put them in your backpack. Feel the weight of the backpack. I can assure you that your relationships are the heaviest burden of your life. Don’t you feel a weight digging into your shoulders? All those negotiations, discussions, secrets and compromises … You don’t need to carry that.

Why don’t they leave the backpack? There are animals that live carrying others in symbiosis all their lives. Unlucky lovers, monogamous swans… we are not those animals. . 

Bingham, in Up in the air.

Our backpack is filled with large, small and medium stones, of all sizes. I like to empty it from time to time but it quickly fills up again, that’s what life has to offer.

We all carry stones, pebbles, and pebbles in our emotional backpack. In fact, we tend to carry it unnecessarily loaded to the extreme. If you have ever wondered what is holding you back when it comes to picking up momentum and continuing, I invite you to look inside, it is more than likely that you will find your answer there.

Even if you can’t see what she’s up to, I bet you feel heavy when you think about her. It is possible that it is full of guilt, confrontations, emotional dependence, high expectations, demands, frustration … All of this is what chains us and prevents us from moving forward.

To this is also added that those of us who have lost loved ones carry a backpack full of absences and, how do we empty the part of our backpack that we miss? It is really difficult, especially when we reproach ourselves for what no longer has a solution.

When you check your bag you will probably realize that much of the weight you are carrying has not even been put into it ; they are small and large stones that other people have kept in you in the past: their fears, their frustrations, their rigidity …

It is possible that you have also put in your backpack toxic feelings generated by anger, fear, excessive sadness, anxiety, prejudices … All of them are heavy slabs that.

Undoubtedly, this load is the most difficult to carry, it is so complicated and heavy that sometimes we even surprise ourselves asking for help because it is sinking us in the mud and we are not able to get rid of it.

Carrying the backpack to the brim is truly terrifying self-sabotage. I wonder what happens to us, why do we cling so much to memories, to the bad things that life offers us, to toxic people … Then only four words come to mind:

The fear of letting go

It is the case that sometimes we are perfectly aware of what paralyzes us and drowns our energies but, nevertheless, we are not able to open the backpack and unload. What is wrong with us?

Well, all these heavy stones are joined by a feeling of identity and belonging; in other words, they are part of us (although an undesirable part, of course). Sometimes we think that if we get rid of it we will also get rid of what defines us or that we have failed.

Feeling that if we don’t hold on a little longer we are missing ourselves and others is amazingly common. . This is still quite contradictory if you think about it, right?

I would define the “fear of letting go” as emotional vertigo ; This is nothing more than fear in its purest form, the fear of facing the emptiness that loss generates. It is the fear of grief over the loss of our love for sacrifice and our weakness for masochism .

Faced with these difficulties, we behave very cruelly to ourselves, how much more do you think you will be able to carry on your back? .

Perhaps you want more to empty your backpack if I tell you that it is space that the negative subtracts from what is truly important and positive for you. : accept your mistakes, manifest your intentions and your commitment, increase your enthusiasm and eliminate what has depleted your well-being, such as emotional predators.

For the sake of your back, let go of bad feelings and toxic people, they are truly deadly. Think that, in our metaphor, they are capable of drowning you in the river without even trying to help you.

It is simply that, from time to time, we stop to check our backpack to get rid of the negative and unnecessary. It is about being aware of what we do is strongly determined by what we carry inside and what

Image courtesy of Larissa Kulik and Annette Shaff