Skip to main content

Excess Baggage: Bike modifications & Life adjustments

Panniers. 

Marvellous invention. 

Can't think why I've left it until now to invest in them for my trusty steed (no. 3, having had two bicycles stolen this year)...

They are designed to make life easier.  Funny that.  Rather than carrying a load on my back which is both uncomfortable, and inconvenient, causing one to arrive at one's destination possibly rather less serene than one might otherwise, not to mention risking life and limb with perilous blindspots, I can now neatly stow whatever I choose to bring with me in transit, arriving without having tested my antiperspirant and patience.


I tend to work with metaphors a lot, and wonder earlier whether there is one here:  I often explore the possible utility and possible benefits of unpacking and then repacking baggage with clients.  We are, it seems, vulnerable to hoarding, and not just in the material sense.  We tend to carry far more around with us than we need or, if we stop to think about it, want.  Why?

For the most part, we do so because life feels too short to stop and review what it is that we've picked up along the way.  Things that aren't ours, that we didn't want, and probably never will, simply get stuck in the 'backpack' squashed down, and compacted by yet more life experience, and the mementos we collect along the way. 

Stopping to review the often heavy and bursting at the seams carrier, is a daunting task that we find good excuses to put off, or avoid completely.  Before we know it, we are laden down and struggling - 'carrying the world on our shoulders'. 

Oftentimes, one of the primary tasks of therapy is, I think, to explore the contents of our backpacks.  The challenge is making the time, and finding a safe space in which to do this.  Just like attics, our minds and bodies can become repositories for things we haven't looked at in a while, if ever.  Like those cardboard boxes we intend to go through 'on a rainy day', in there will be painful memories, resentments, guilt and shame for amends not yet made, and quite possibly a whole lot of stuff we've been given that we never asked for.  Our parents' and family's keepsakes, and unprocessed history. 

Sometimes, the only thing to do is to have a clear out - emptying the contents onto the floor, in order firstly to see what we are carrying, before judiciously choosing whether we wish to carry it further.  There will be things we need, things we think we may need, and may hold on to for longer, things we are not yet ready to dispose of, and things we cannot believe we have brought this far along the journey. 

Just like the retrospectively obvious and seemingly wise investment I recently made, to upgrade my bike, and improve my life, the action can only follow a decision which is made only when we are ready...


"Simplicity is making the journey of this life with just baggage enough." 
Charles Dudley Warner (Author, 1829-1900)


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Table. Apple. Penny.

Whilst there were several places I might have been that morning, I wouldn't have been anywhere else.  The practitioner from the Memory Service arrived promptly.  I liked her instantly.    Mum was nervous.  I think I was a little, too.  It's been a difficult year.   "It's Friday, it's the fourteenth of December and I'm at home..."   No problems there.  CAMCOG, or the Cambridge Cognitive Examination is a thorough assessment tool used to assess the extent of extent of dementia, and to assess the level of cognitive impairment.  The standardised  measure assesses orientation, language, memory, praxis, attention, abstract thinking, perception and calculation.    "Table.  Apple.  Penny."   Three everyday items that were introduced at one point, and then referred to again later on.  Again, Mum was able to recall each.      I am reminded that the...

Joan Miro: Emotional Art

"Painting and poetry are like love; an exchange of blood, a passionate embrace, without restraint, without defence.  The picture is born of an overflow of emotions and feelings." Miro, The Farm 'La Masia' (1921-22) I learnt a great deal about Miro on a recent visit to the Tate.  I learnt a great deal about a lot more too. Miro wanted to discover the sources of human feeling.  He described his method of creating poetry by way of painting, using a vocabulary of signs and symbols, metaphors and dream images to express definite themes he believed to be fundamental to human existence.  The exhibition displays his sense of humor and lively wit.  His chief concern was a social one; he wanted to get close to the great masses of humanity, and he was convinced that art can only truly appeal when it resonates with roots of lived experience.  "Wherever you are, you find the sun, a blade of grass, the spirals of the dragonfly.  Courage cons...

Glass half full? Glass half empty? Or perhaps the glass is broken

I am, constitutionally, a glass half empty gal.  I will always first acknowledge what I don't have, what I have lost, and what it is that I am seeking.  I tend to overlook my strengths, concentrating only on those bits of me that are underdeveloped or weak.  I refer to myself as a realist, but in doing so compliment myself and insult those who genuinely are simply realistic.  My modus operandi is to identify what's not working and acknowledge this before seeing more clearly what functions perfectly well.  This has its place: I edit others' written work pretty well.  My fastidious attention to detail serves me, and the author.  Accuracy counts, for me and I have an excellent memory.  I can remember a great many of my sessions with clients verbatim.  Even this asset is something I can, and do, diminish the true value of, by concentrating on 'I should have said...' or 'why didn't....  occur to me during the session?' Earlier this we...