Hi all! So, I came across a wonderful post sometime back on Facebook, and thought would share the same with you today. Yes, it might seem strange, but social media does throw up some good gems sometimes! 😁
Here’s that post:
Isn’t that just a wonderful observation?!
And put so well into words by the author! I probably can not do as well a job of it, but I just wanted to expand on that analogy a bit. When I first read that passage, it seemed pretty straight-forward. But when I thought about it a bit more, I realised there was more to it than that.
We carry so much of our past, our experiences, our hurt and anger everyday, and everywhere, with us. You would’ve guessed: all these are the “glass” in this metaphor.
But here’s the thing: It’s not just restricted to such negative things. I’d also include positive things like peoples’ expectations, our own dreams, the longing for things yet to do or achieve, etc. in the definition of that “glass”. Anything that is part of our psyche, our soul, that we think about regularly as we live our life, is contained in that “glass”. The key concept is “thought” – the “glass” is just a collection of thoughts.
Then because of any unfortunate things that have happened to us in the past – losing loved ones, making mistakes, getting accused of things we didn’t do, sometimes, just being unlucky – we feel let down by life. We feel injustice was done to us. We feel wronged. We have trouble coming to terms with it. This is the “weight” of the “glass” that we carry with us.
But as before, there’s more to it than that. Even the positive things that I talked about earlier (expectations, hopes, longing) have a weight of their own! It might not seem like it, but somebody driven by the sole goal to achieve something in life, so much so that they become blind to everything else, also carries a weight in a way! When we pine for something so deeply that it hurts, we carry the weight of our longings too! Here, the key concept is “feeling” – the “weight” of the “glass” is how strongly we feel about our thoughts.
When the unknown author says that we become numb and paralyzed by the weight of the glass if we carry it too long, it’s clear how that would be the case when the glass is made up of our hurt, anger, disappointments, etc. The longer we hold on to these things, the heavier they become, until something has to break.
But this is also true when we feel too strongly about the other things – things like peoples’ expectations, our value in their eyes, things that we think we need to achieve to be happy, our so called “targets” in life.
Now, I’m not trying to say that we should let go of our dreams, that we stop working towards our goals, stop wishing for things. No. A life devoid of hopes, dreams, something to look forward to, wouldn’t be a life at all.
What I do want to say is, be aware of the weight of even these things.
Everyone knows that they shouldn’t hold on to anger, to regrets, etc. Whether we can let go of them is a different story, but at least, we know that these things are not good for us.
But the other things – the weight of the positives – is something we don’t realise generally. We live our lives chasing one thing after another, we begin identifying ourselves with our targets, as if they define us. They do not.
Every “glass” is different, as every human is different. But no matter what your glass is made of, good or bad, put it down, even if just for a short while, whenever it seems to be getting too heavy, before it becomes too late.
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