Our universe isn’t expansive. That would be a terrible way to describe it. Expansive is far too imaginable to describe how massive the known and observable chunk of our universe is. Look up at the clear night sky. Behold the diamonds twinkling from their heavenly helms. It’s awe-some.
You still only see a sliver of what’s out there, what we’re inside of.
One thing is certain though. You know it’s beyond huge.
Now hoist it on your shoulders for eternity for your part in the Titonomachy, better known as the Battle of the Titans. You are Atlas, an elder Titan. You fight against Zeus and the other upstart Olympians.
It takes ten years for you to lose.
Your punishment? Hold the sky on your shoulders, forever.
That sucks. Do you know how heavy that is? (After a certain point it kind of stops mattering, right?)
This is how our box-of-chocolates, problem-riddled lives feel sometimes. Just one more weight to carry. May as well just put the whole freakin’ universe up there.
Boo-hoo to me and you.
Or…
Maybe that whole notion is absurd and needs to get kicked in the groin.
(Ever wonder if this might be a universal truth capable of uniting humanity? When you feel like you want to do harm to someone because they’re different, simply remind yourself that everyone has been kicked in the groin at least once in their life. It hurts a lot. So you have that in common. Where were we? Oh yeah..)
Square in the baby-maker.
That’ll teach us to stop asking for growth and then whine and suck our thumbs when we have growth-inducing experiences. What did we expect? A scalp massage? That might encourage hair growth but it won’t promote much in way of character.
Repeat after me,
“Get over yourself, ______.”
(You were supposed to put your name in that space. Let’s try again. I will, too.)
“Get over yourself, ______.”
Life isn’t one long nose-wiping marathon.
Agreed? Now we can talk about your shoulders.
Think they’re pretty strong, your shoulders? You can hold a lot of life up there, huh? Years of practice eventually pays off. How long has some of that stuff been up there for anyway? Looks kind of dusty. I hope you don’t have allergies.
Shouldering a burden commands a particular brand of respect in our culture. It’s a blue-collar emotional persistence that’s admired in others and secretly damns your happiness. Like anything that can be romanticized, carrying the weight of times turned tepid is an individual sport that feels nothing in reality like it looks like from a distance in others.
That means a few things. First, we think “taking one for the team” is noble and therefore we do it when we shouldn’t do it. We allow ourselves to take other people’s problems and carry them as if they were ours. Which is okay I guess when you’re helping but it’s not okay when you think you’re helping but you’re actually not helping at all. Stay with me if this isn’t making sense. I promise it will soon.
Then there are your “problems.” You’ve got a bunch of them, don’t you? Yep, me too. I think about them a bunch. You, too? I figured that’s the case. (Now we have two things in common. This and the groin thing.) Have you noticed what I’ve noticed? You can’t answer that yet because I haven’t told you what I’ve noticed. I’ll tell you that now so then you can say if you’ve noticed that or not. Here it is.
I carry those things around with me. Somehow they possess gravity. I can relate to it physically at times. When I let these things run the show I can feel the difference in my frame. Sometimes I carry these things far longer than their freshness date.
That’s part of what I noticed. There’s another part, too. Here’s that part.
I don’t think It’s about how long you can hold it for. Some things need to be put down never to be picked up again. Why would you want to hold one of those things a single day longer than was useful? (I don’t count “survival” as incredibly useful when we live lives where survival isn’t the sole appointment in our digital calendar.) You wouldn’t. Unless holding this thing relieves you from having to pick up that scarier thing across the way. Then there’s plenty of incentive to keep things just as they’ve always been.
There’s one more part. I swear this is the last part. Here it is.
I think It might be about how heavy the things are that you’re able to hold at and during their appointed time. If you’re hot in pursuit of making your meaning and mattering then you might need to hold some heavy stuff at times. You probably need to work your way up to it, right? I think that makes sense. Like any thing that builds on previous experience. Like building, anything, really. Something comes before some other things. Those other things enhance and increase the first somethings.
So, have you noticed any of that?
Because I have.
And what of our pal, Atlas?
He’s still under the weight of his fate, I guess. Then again, he didn’t have a choice in his punishment, did he?
Which is something you need to stop saying about yourself.
You do have a choice.
You have The choice.
Remember that.
I guarantee you Atlas does.
