The thing is, you never know what stuff someone else is carrying or dealing with or holding onto; you know bout your stuff, or at least the hope is that you know about your stuff, but we all, in one way or another, are walking around heavy laden with our personal baggage. And often times, that load we are carrying is all we notice, it distracts us and keeps us from noticing what it is that the people around us are carrying. A little aside: I think there is also a tendency to believe that each of us, individually, are the only ones carrying anything – we may know in theory that about the existence of other stuff, but it is hard to notice, remember, consider, when we feel the weight of our own burden. There is too that strong ego that likes us to feel special, and holding on to the personal weight of our stuff helps us feel unique.

Any yet, it is true, we ALL have stuff.

Yesterday, I called my husband early in the morning, who was some thousands of miles away, because the thing we bought to avoid the situation was not doing the avoidance work which meant the situation was happening and the account is in his name and he worked with the installer, and also there are ants in the kitchen, and in the cat food, the bougainvillea died because the gopher ate the roots, and here I am alone dealing with this stuff which I should not have to be dealing with because we spent the many dollars to avoid exactly this, and why the he** do I always have to deal with all the cr*p here with these stupid systems that don’t work as planned. And the go*-damned ants!

Incidentally, and I acknowledge, not my finest moment, the aforementioned call may have involved something that sounded like yelling.

That was my stuff yesterday. It is not big stuff, I know that. Even in the midst of it I knew it was small, annoyances that could all be dealt with, that would resolve. But it was there and I was feeling it and not in the best space to manage it well. My husband had his own stuff that morning, things I was not privy to, and what with being some thousands of miles away, the system not being online, and not being an engineer there was not much he could do. But I wanted my stuff acknowledged, even if not immediately solved (though if I am being honest I wanted that too), and his stuff was getting in the way of my stuff, and my stuff was an unhelpful distraction to his stuff, and you probably get the idea.

Now I come to the point: it’s not that your stuff, or my stuff is bigger or better or more deserving of time and attention, it’s that we all have something, and almost all the time it is making it hard for us to show to, or with each other. And this is especially true if I am not paying attention to what it is that is currently making up my load of stuff. It’s not that I have to pretend that I don’t have stuff, or that I have to get so enlightened that I don’t have any stuff at all – the fact is that for the vast majority of us that is never going to happen anyway. It is that I need to build a practice of being able to see what it is that I am carrying, and I need to develop tools that help me to carry it all more effectively, more comfortably, so that I don’t end up, like I did yesterday, having a self-indulgent fit and throwing all my stuff at someone else. This is true for the big stuff and the small stuff.

If you are carrying big stuff it might be too much to ask you to carry that with serenity and equanimity. You can, though, carry it with awareness and kind warnings to the people you come in contact with: ‘I am dealing with this thing and so I may only have X% emotional capacity right now.’ It works even if you think it to yourself and allow it to help you make choices about what you can and can’t do in any given moment. You can’t control what someone else does with the information you give them or the boundaries you create to are for yourself, but you can at least be honest with yourself and with them. Or maybe you are carrying small things that feel big, or small things that are just super annoying. We have to practice knowing what we are carrying, what we need, and asking for help in a way that does not minimize our situation but that is also aware of what our own emotional reactivity is doing.

I lost it yesterday because I was not in control, I did not understand how to solve the problem, and I felt like I was all alone. That is my personal recipe for emotional disaster. We all have one. I have a faith practice that includes daily prayer and meditation; I have been asking God to help me with trust and patience, and ooooh boy does God ever help when you ask to learn deeper lessons. After my fit and the necessary apologies, as I stood looking at the panel with the switches and dials and buttons, I opted here to ask God for the strength to be patient, to wait for the technician, and to trust that people would do what they said they would do, and to remember that I was in fact not alone. It was a lot of small stuff and a really good big lesson.

Not sure where to start to build these practices for yourself? To build an awareness of where your stuff might be making it hard to see beyond your own full arms? Start with a list of your stuff, no matter how small: the things of the day, the week, the year – however far you want to go. Then ask of each item: why? why am I carrying you? what about you feels heavy? is there someone I can ask for help? Be curious and kind to yourself. And when you can, remember that we all have stuff.

“Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

– Matthew 11: 28-30 NRSV

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