The Backpack

I fall asleep when I watch movies. It’s a terrible habit.

Doesn’t matter how interesting the movie is, I’ll still tend to get way too comfortable on my couch and catch a nap somewhere after the first hour. The movie continues while I sleep and I wake up for the credits, wondering if my dream was anything like the rest of the movie.

Recently, I fell asleep to “Up in the Air”.

(Don’t worry, this isn’t a spoiler)

At one point in the film, there is a speech about a backpack. The speaker challenges the group to imagine they are the owners of a backpack in which they place all of their belongings. He talks about the weight of this backpack, the weight of our possessions and argues that if we didn’t have this unbelievable weight on our backs we would be much happier people. He purposes setting that backpack on fire. Getting rid of the things that tie us down, hold us back.

There is a second backpack he talks about, in which we put the people in our lives, our relationships. Though he doesn’t suggest that we set that pack on fire, his implication is that these relationships are also weights holding us down; keeping us from fulfilling our life’s purpose. He suggests that we should unload these “burdens” and walk through life essentially alone. This is his idea of success; he lives his life in a carry on suitcase with no attachments that last more than the time it takes to fly from place to place or have a conversation in an airport bar.

I woke up from my nap thinking about this speech, looking around me at the things I have accumulated in my adult life. The couch I slept on, the TV I was watching the movie on, my dining table, my Steven King books, my dishes and collection of cobalt glass. The Pulp Fiction figurines, Nutcracker that scares me, cigar box with my grandpa’s pipes in it, and antique wood plane that live on my shelf of random things. I wondered if they were in fact holding me back. What would my life look like if I wasn’t attached to these things? I could leave this place at anytime if I didn’t have them, start new. I wouldn’t have to think about how I’m going to get it all moved; I could live in the equivalent of a closet.

I thought about the pain my relationships have brought me, and imagined what my life would be like without all of that heartache. Would I feel lonely if I never had experienced what it was like to share my life with someone? There would be no missing someone who is no longer in my life if they hadn’t left an empty space when they walked away. My heart couldn’t be broken if I had never allowed it into another persons care.

At first glance it seemed like not a bad idea; my life seems to be constantly in flux anyway, and I have the desire to change it drastically as soon as school allows. I could start downsizing now. That way in a year when I move wherever it is I’m moving when I finish school, it will be that much easier.

Leaving would be easier if I didn’t have friends to leave behind, and finding a place to land wouldn’t seem so difficult if my heart wasn’t pulling me in so many different directions. To be truly alone, and live only for myself didn’t seem like such a bad idea.

The more I thought about it though, the more I knew he was wrong.

My couch isn’t oversized when I have friends sitting on it with me.

My kitchen table is a perfect fit when I’m sharing a meal, and the things on my random shelf seem just a little less random when I tell the stories behind them.

My bed wouldn’t feel too big if I had someone to share it with.

My grief is overwhelming without someone to comfort me.

If no one depended on me to be strong, I might not have ever learned to be, and who would I be if I had never allowed myself to fall in love completely and suffer the heartbreak that followed?

Laughing alone only makes me sound crazy.

Successes are pointless without someone to celebrate them with.

It’s not about unloading the backpack.

It’s about finding people to share it with.

People who can help us carry it when it seems too heavy for us to bear alone, and being the person who will help carry theirs when our shoulders can handle the extra weight.