the world came crashing down, when the man whose responsibility to hold the burden of the world could no longer carry the weight, when he began to tremble and shake and could not endure another second, it came down.
one of my all-time favorite books, ayn rand took the concept, that at one time in her fictional, yet visionary tale, when the weak minded who could no longer assume any responsibility for any of their actions, en masse they heaped them upon the shoulders of those who could carry the burdens of society until even the strong each hit that point when they said no more i am done!
am i atlas?
there comes a time in each person's life when the burdens of carrying the world are just too great and we slip and little by little the burden begins to destroy us. some get wiped out and crushed by the burdens they assume, others by ones that have been heaped on them.
in any case, the burdens we carry need to be examined more closely why are we so burdened? can i lose some of this weight that is loaded upon me?
do i even own it any longer? is it mine to carry? can someone else take some of this?
tough questions all
not impossible just not easy, as kind and caring people we tend to assume others burdens if only to be a generous spirit and assist those we care about. but there does come a time when we must look at the amount of the burdens and own the ones we must carry and begin to lessen the load or we too like our brother atlas will begin to drop the entire load.
doing the work to move forward in our lives we have to let go of the burdens of the past, many have long been carried after they have no longer served any purpose. look at many of your oldest burdens that you carry and why? for most of us they are resentments for deeds done to us by people we loved or trusted and in the betrayal, we hold layers of debris, piled upon layers. if we took the time to literally see the burden as objects, they have become hard and encrusted like layers of bricks piled high and heavy, yet they truly hold no value. lots of weight but not an ounce of value.
in learning to love yourself, you need to peel back layer after layer and learn that it is ok to let this debris go, pain and anger created many of these layers and we are often times either too stubborn or too angry to see that carrying old resentments just weighs us down. many of these old injuries get in the way of our living in the present, enjoying the moment. causing us to waste some valuable assets on things that have no merit. time which we all fail to realize does not go on forever eventually, we all hit our sell-by date, and then slowly we get closer to our true expiration date. by holding past resentments we take so much of the valuable time that we need to live in the present and waste in on actions committed in the past.
time wasted is never returned once it is gone it is gone, and i know for myself i wish to live in the present, no matter how many awful things were done to me in the past, the longer i waste my precious time focused on those deeds, the more time is just lost, i no longer feel the clock has a snooze button.
the other asset we are wasting is our energy the stuff that keeps us going, our chi. again we tend to believe we have endless time and energy to waste when in all honesty we don't. energy like time can have multiple uses it can be used to propel us forward and into a lighter life, or we can burn it up, drain ourselves and waste it on hating details that in the grand scheme of things have lost their power. energy is our lifeforce and it has the potential to be loving and caring, generous and giving or it can be hateful, angry, frustrating, mean and sometimes downright evil. when we balance that energy with how we tend to feel about it, the love and kind energy makes us feel good if not great, while the negative energy makes us tired and drained and weak, confused and sick.
use this analogy if it helps:
2 trains leave Cleveland station train A with 27 people on board, 8 get off at Rivertown and 12 get on, each person has 2 pieces of luggage, in Center town 32 people get on and 18 people get off, each of the trains are going 75 miles per hour, on train B 45 people are westbound and 86 people are eastbound, it starts to rain at Watertown. 12 people are reading newspapers on train A and 51 on train B what time did the trains leave Cleveland station?
a perfect example of a debris pile up, not one item is relevant to anything, the exercise just wasted your time and if you are like me, i despise these problems. the energy and time are just that used up. not sure about you but i am drained, weak and confused. basically a mess, now if we had taken that time and called a sick friend and asked if they needed anything, our time would not have been wasted, we would feel useful and maybe help someone who needed our time and energy in a positive way. see my point if we spend our valuable time and energy and not get something positive out of it, not only is it used up we don't feel any better.
personally, i took down the burden and examined just exactly what it contained and i was not surprised that the heaviest load was old debris and lots of it negative, here i was at the apex of my life and i am carrying stuff so old and useless wasting my time and energy. no wonder i felt sick and tired all the time i was filling my body with toxic old debris and making it worse by keeping it and adding to it creating a heavier load than i needed to carry.
it is really good practice to open up those metaphorical bags and take a peek at what is inside and toss away the stuff that is weighing us down needlessly. obviously, some pains are too intense to ever just toss them aside, anger, a loss they all have a place in our burdens. life could not exist without the balance of yin and yang of light and dark. some of the burden we have to keep simply because we have to hold them for reasons best kept to ourselves.
and that is ok, no one can walk the planet free of burden, ok maybe the Dalai Lama he seems pretty enlightened... at least he is always smiling!
but for the rest of us, open it up and let us take a look at what we have in that bag, take stock and learn to forgive and forget. many of our heaviest burdens are those connected to deep levels of anger or hurt and betrayal. sure it would nice to forgive, that SOB who took off with your life savings, but let us be honest that is never going to happen, we will always have to keep some of that hurt and pain, simply because we are human, and letting go of that much pain is never just going to happen. we almost need some of it, to remind us to be a bit more cautious next time. sometimes a negative burden holds a red flag memory and that is not a bad thing,
if indeed a similar situation should happen to come along that red flag could mean the difference of falling into that same trap yet again, or stopping pausing trusting and saying NO!
but dig a bit deeper into the "bag" and there is your old best friend who took your college beloved away from you and up and married them, toss it... serves no purpose they divorced 3 years ago.
or how about that time the roofing repair guy charged you for a full replacement and only did half, toss it. the angst is not going to get you another half a roof.
seems easy with me standing here telling you what to toss, hey after all it's not my stuff.
and in all sense of reality i am not standing with you as you go through the debris, you have enough knowledge to look at what you have been holding and what is relevant to you, and you make that call to keep it or toss it!
the goal here is to lighten the burden, to de-atlas yourself, with each memory you toss your burden gets lighter, give it a go and see how much clutter you can free up and ease your time and energy burden while making yourself lighter and happier.
there is a pitfall that you need to try and avoid, although it is very difficult sometimes we dig deeply into our debris and uncover a hurt long since stored in the back of our mind, from either too much pain or hurt that you shut it down, you still carry it but you have almost forgotten that it is still there. those are the big ones so be careful. once uncovered we may have to revisit some of the pain from these, in fact, you really have no choice but to reopen the thought process and rekindle old pain.
this is what we call the risky business of cleaning out our old debris, some of these are way too painful to just toss, and we have to really take a good hard look at them if we can, this might just be a good time to let the wave of emotion just take you in its power, don't fight the wave, you might not drown but you are not surfing this one. some people will suffer the moment as if it was a freshly opened wound and really own the pain, and it could last a while there is no quick fix for some of these and many times they might be the trigger for you to open up to a professional to get help with some deeply rooted pains. the end result will be the same with the guidance of a professional you should be able to release some of the pressure of even these deep dark memories and ease the burden. the flip side is the amount of debris that you can alleviate by yourself will take a load off the burden, and free up some time and energy to become a better happier version of you. and i personally think therapy when needed is a good thing.
part of the healing process is to forgive yourself, many of the burdens we hold on to are ones we have created for ourselves, low self-esteem issues, weight issues, self-respect, personal identity issues, again you know what is in that "bag" and how important they are, just living a full life, we tend to heap on that pile already established. some can be tossed if you are coming from a stronger self than when you first added them to your burden, if not stop pause and own the feeling and really get to know it, why do i need this now, sure when i was 16, 18, 21, .. but now i don't connect to this as deeply, let it go. accept that you might have needed those emotions at one point in your life but now you can forgive yourself for holding on to them for so long.
remember the goal to take the weight off not keep it for sentimental reasons, sure there are plenty of martyrs out there who love to heap more and more and many times even take on the burdens of others. let them do what they wish, they are probably not reading this anyway.
my favorites are the self-sacrificing victims out there that complain about the weight of the burden but never look to lighten the load, they shift it about and always look for ways to hold onto the blame of other people, "i will never forgive them for what they have done to me!" or "it was not my fault, things happened all around me" yes indeed very possible that deeds happened around you and that you were completely unaware of them at the time, the trick here is at the time.
you are no longer at the time. you are years away from then and you have the ability to see the issues for what they are. guess what you don't have to keep them any longer, listen i am not your guru, or your therapist i can only offer you my opinions and my views of things have worked for me. if you wish to hold onto old memories of past hurts and losses, feel free.
my goal is to offer you a chance to get out from under the weight that could inevitably lead to a more time lost and more energy wasted, and keep you further away from a happier life.
i am only a man who has been given the blessing of seeing that life is way too short, and it also does not last forever, and making a change was a lot less difficult than i thought. my purpose is to help anyone who wishes to be helped, if you are one of those and would like some assistance along the journey, here is my hand you can take it and we can work together to help you find your easier path, and enjoy more time feeling happier, doing good things for others and not just existing but living the wonderful gift that you have been given by g-d the breath of life, or you can struggle till your knees begin to wobble under the weight of the world like our good friend atlas.
as with every opportunity that exists in life the choice is always yours. along with life we were also given free will... so use yours for the best options you can see, but remember that you are not alone, you are never alone!
tony scarpa
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