Unpacking my car

After nearly ten weeks of living out of my car, I am back at my home base in Ohio for a bit. Of course, one of the first things I did was unpack and clean my car. It truly shocked me how much stuff came out of my car. After ten weeks, you would think I would know every square inch of that car but it wasn't quite the case. I used perhaps one third of the stuff packed so tightly into my car. The rest, well it managed to find a way into my car thanks to my, “if there is room, why not add it”, mindset. Past Jenna figured it wouldn’t hurt to have a bit of extra stuff, you know, just in case.

The first time I drove my car after taking out all of this stuff made me realize, yes it did hurt to have all of it. It felt like I had a brand new car all of a sudden. It felt lighter and faster in every way. I was shocked by the difference I noticed. I really didn’t think all the stuff I had packed in my car was that heavy. But apparently, all together, it was weighing down my car. It made me laugh out loud when I noticed how different the driving experience was.

The funny thing is, I never noticed my car wasn’t driving that great for the entirety of those ten weeks. I had no idea that it was being weighed down by all my stuff and going significantly slower than it usually would. I could not appreciate any change until I took out all the stuff.

It made me think about how often we, as humans, are walking through this world carrying so much stuff, having no idea how much it is slowing us down. Just like my car packed with all my stuff, I couldn't tell it was not operating at optimal capacity until I unpacked everything. Only after cleaning it out, could I tell the difference. The same goes for us. We don’t know the energy we are wasting because we’ve never walked through life lighter.

I’m talking metaphorical stuff here but it could also mean literal. As we move through life, we are constantly collecting stuff. Stuff in the form of fears and worries, expectations and dreams and also identities and purposes. Sometimes we get so busy with life that we forget to stop and clean ourselves out every once in a while. The wild thing is, because we pick up all this stuff so slowly, we normalize the weight of it. It is fascinating how easy it is to forget that we are carrying so much on our shoulders every moment of every day.

Before we know it, what used to be an easy day to manage has become a fight for our lives. This exhaustion that so many people are feeling is not normal or okay. Life is not supposed to feel like we are trudging through mud with weighted backpacks on, but it sure does sometimes. It is scarier to me that some people have lost the ability to discern how much effort they are wasting by carrying unnecessary weight. They have conditioned themselves to believe that this is simply the weight of life. But what if that is not the case?

I think about this often when I go backpacking. A trail that is easy all the sudden turns into the toughest climb when I strap 20-30 lbs onto my back. After a few miles though, I am not as bothered by it. Until I take my pack off that is. Once it’s off, phew, I notice how light I feel.

Backpacking is such a beautiful physical embodiment of how life can feel sometimes. Again, the first bit of hiking is always the worst. Getting used to the weight is rough, but then once you settle into a pace, you just assume it is normal to feel a bit sluggish and weighed down. Then the pack comes off and you instantly remember exactly how heavy that pack is. In an instant, every movement feels so light and easy. It is an incredible feeling even if you were exhausted mere minutes before.

The complicated thing about life is that we often pick up stuff along the way without even noticing. We collect burdens, obligations and expectations and stuff them into our proverbial car or backpack without a second thought. They can stay in there for years if we aren’t careful. It is so incredibly easy to forget about the weight we each carry. We slip so quickly into the assumption that life is just heavy. But I really do not believe this to be true.

Every once in a while, you have to put the weight down or clean out the car. This is the only way to notice how much excess weight you are lugging around. Carrying burdens that are unnecessary and often not even ours. We get so accustomed to this weight that we forget there is another way. We forget how light life can feel.

Sometimes, it isn’t until something happens that forces us to clean out the car or drop the pack that we notice the energy we are expending. Life really shouldn’t feel like a slog up a hill with a heavy pack on our back. Life will of course have it’s ups and downs, its peaks and valleys, but its so much more manageable without the weight.

This past year, even with my over packed car, I have removed a lot of weight from my life. I have the immense privilege to remove far more weight from my life than most people are able to do. Nearly daily, I have been reminded how light life can be and I do not take that for granted. But still, I am shocked by how well I carried the weight of life before. I thought life was light the past few years in Colorado only to realize that I had a lot more weight to put down to truly feel how life could be. It is wild how easy it is to become accustomed to a heavy burden.

Sometimes the first step in putting down what we are carrying, is to notice now heavy it is. If we can’t tell how cluttered our life has become, we cannot take any steps to remedy it. In this sense, it is actually beautiful when life begins to feel impossibly heavy. That is when we will finally have the courage to take the pack off or unpack the car. Then we can finally sense into how life is designed to feel. Life doesn’t have to always feel like driving a car weighed down by too much stuff or like hiking up a hill with a heavy pack on.

Checking in with ourselves often is so important. Checking all the hidden compartments within ourselves for unnecessary weight and junk is imperative. Sometimes we let things sit inside of us for far too long. We get comfortable with the weight of it, to the point where we forget it doesn’t have to be carried.

Perhaps this is a sign that each of us needs to regularly put everything we are carrying down. Just as a quick reminder of the real weight of life. If we don’t do this, it is far too easy to begin to assume life will always feel heavy. Or at a minimum, go clean out your car and notice how much better it drives when its not weighed down by a bunch of unnecessary stuff.