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.