Baggage

I work on a construction site which means that I end up with a lot of weird stuff in my pockets at the end of the day. Gaskets, pieces of drywall and anything the vacuum cleaner won’t pick up. Most noticeably I have lots of screws. Stud screws, drywall screws, small screws, large screws. They seem to be what holds the universe together. Screws and duct tape. I have a whole bowl of the things in my apartment and today when I was cleaning I wondered why. I suppose that I think to myself that either I will return them the site, which is not really feasible or that I will use them for something. Perhaps it’s my Austrian heritage that makes me want to keep things. My Oma used to keep nylons every time they got a run in them. When she died and we were cleaning out her things I swear we found enough nylons to outfit the entire country.

I am not an incapable person but I am also not the person you call when you need to build a wall or hang cabinets. So, why do I assume that this bowl of screws would come in handy for anything?

Why do we hold onto things that can never do us any good? Clothes that will never be in style again, receipts for a vacuum cleaner that we no longer own and check copies from the late eighties. Eventually we end up with so much baggage that it seems impossible to get rid of it or move through it.

Then one day something switches, like it did in my head a few weeks ago. I started pulling things off shelves, throwing things away and putting things in boxes to give away. I felt light. I posted my stuff for people to dig through, perhaps they have a better use for it then I do. I felt lighter. I watched everyone take my useless stuff, stuff that bogged me down and use it in a better way. I felt content.

We all carry baggage. Stuff that we thought might be useful one day. Walls, barriers, road blocks. We make people try and get around them. And sometimes those people don’t make it. Every once in a while though something amazing happens. There is a person who manages to get around the barrier and they find all that baggage. But instead of throwing it away they take it away with them and turn it into something useful and make it work a better way. And then something switches. We start throwing away all of that stuff that wasn’t doing us any good. And we feel lighter.

Gotta Dance,Gotta Dance

My Mum told me a story once about my Grandma that I want to tell. When my Grandma was in her twenties she used to love to dance. She would sell eggs from the chickens on the farm and had enough money to either buy a coke, which was pretty big then, or to go dancing. She usually picked dancing. Her mother would make dresses that matched her boyfriend’s military uniforms and they would go and dance. The story is that they were so good that people would clear the floor for them.

About a year ago I was dancing with one of my good friends and one of my favorite dance partners and the same thing happened. We looked up and the floor was empty. I tell this story not to stroke my ego but to say that in that moment I wished very much that my Grandma hadn’t passed away when I was twelve so that I could call her and share that with her. I tell it because dancing still makes me happy. So much that I hadn’t even noticed the people, just the person that I was dancing with.

The universe throws all kinds of curve balls at you. Sometimes all you can do is stand in the room and hope that they don’t hit you in the head as the whiz by. On occasion though, someone stands in a room and helps you catch them. The things that matter turn out to be small and seemingly insignificant but on a day when you need them more than anything they are like a rare currency.

They are these things…

Being someone’s role model, doing well at your job, having a friend who will look at your car… again, delicious food made by someone who listens, someone warm after a cold day, someone who tells you how beautiful you look, dancing with your favorite people until you want to collapse and having a best friend who will hold you and make the world go away for just awhile.

When the good things in a day outweigh the bad despite your effort to be unhappy and angry you can be truly happy and grateful.