Feel Free

16/09/2007

How does one wage a war against burdens? My life’s burdens are reflected in the amount of stuff I accumulate, and I have discovered that it’s a chicken-or-egg situation. I sometimes tackle the junk first, and the psychological correlatives raise their heads and need to be dealt with, or I work at the life-coaching and the clearing out follows.

Recently I suddenly had to move, which then presented me with the opportunity to have a real throwing-out session. My friends helped, and were wonderfully ruthless, “No, you don’t need two of these! No, that just takes up space!” The result was that I found myself knowing exactly what was in my drawers, which were washed clean and not overflowing. What relief and freedom there was in that!

One ornament was especially significant. My sister had sent it to me because it had somehow landed up with her stuff. It was a porcelain figurine I’d inherited from my mother. Now all my life I have been in awe of my mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal house and I believed I loved all her bric-a-brac. None of it had previously entered my ex-pat world, however. It was strange that when I opened the package from my sister, I had an enormous, shocking urge to smash the poor shepherd and his shepherdess against a wall. I didn’t. I dutifully put it with all my other clutter. Now when this move happened, the ornament was a challenge. It seemed a sacrilege not to keep it. Yet, I wanted my hard-won freedom from her taste and her lifestyle back. In the end, I put it in the charity box. My mother had always been so conscientious and generous towards charities that it seemed an appropriate end to the shepherd’s story.

For me, it was a step towards greater freedom to find and be myself. The war against burdens and their physical analogies in our lives is well worth fighting and the taste of freedom is a sweet reward.

Submitted by Melanie Steyn, English Professor, Author & Friend