The Bag of Burdens

The Watcher had noticed long ago the bags that people carried.

Not the ones that held their belongings.

Not handbags. Not suitcases.

No - these bags were different, and most folk didn’t even know they were carrying them.

The Watcher sometimes wondered why it was that she could see these bags.

It might have been far more entertaining to see people’s auras instead.

She had heard there were those who could - softening their gaze and watching colours shimmer into view.

She had even attended an event where aura imaging cameras were used. Depending on the colour, different aspects of a person’s health or spiritual state were revealed.

Only the other week, one of her grandchildren had shown her an aura app on their phone.

The only colour she truly remembered the meaning of was silver - abundance.

Spiritual or material wealth.

She smiled at that.

Not for the material wealth - pleasant though it might be - but for the spiritual kind.

She was old enough now to know that was where the true sweetness lay.

With a small effort, the Watcher drew her thoughts back.

The bags.

She wasn’t quite sure how the knowing had come to her.

Perhaps - she mused - there was more silver in her aura than she realised, and something Divine had quietly pointed it out.

The bags were metaphorical - and yet, deeply real.

She was aware of the contradiction, and accepted it.

They held the things people struggled to carry openly.

Unexpressed grief. Resentment. Unforgiveness.

Feelings of lack. Anger. Hatred. Overwhelm. Disappointment.

All placed carefully inside.

Everyone carried one.

Even the most prominent gurus.

They resembled rucksacks, really - but bag of burden was her preferred term.

Over time, the Watcher had noticed that many people carried one defining weight -

a thread that ran through their entire life.

A lesson.

It would show itself again and again in different guises, as if asking - gently or not so gently - to be seen.

In such cases, it was almost as though the bag bore a patch, stitched firmly in place.

Unloveable.

Not enough.

Too much.

She had recognised her own.

Fear.

It had taken her many years to see it clearly - fear of failure, of letting people down, of being too much and not enough all at once.

She had even carried a deep and trembling fear of snakes well into her late fifties - until, eventually, she turned to face it.

The Watcher saw these things easily.

And for many years, she had wished - quietly, earnestly - that she possessed a magic pair of scissors.

Something to cut the straps of these bags.

To watch them fall to the ground, releasing their owners from burdens carried far too long.

But in time, she came to understand the flaw in that wish.

As painful as it was to witness -

each person had to discover their own bag.

To recognise the patterns.

To feel the weight of them.

And, in their own time, choose to set them down.

Over the years, the Watcher had offered advice - both asked for and not.

Wisdom she knew, with some certainty, might ease another’s burden.

But more often than not, it drifted unheard.

And so she learned to watch.

It was always a quiet joy when she encountered those who had begun to empty their bags.

They were easy to recognise.

There was a lightness in their step.

A softness in their presence.

They no longer pushed away their emotions or buried their struggles.

Instead, they turned toward them.

Held them.

And, somehow, made space for them.

The Watcher had come to believe that these bags were carried throughout most of life.

Except, perhaps, in the very beginning.

In those early years, when mothers - or those who loved us - kept careful watch.

When our needs were carried for us.

Nappies. Bottles. Toys. Comfort.

All held within a different kind of bag.

Which, she thought, might be why it was easier to raise children when one’s own bag was still light.

Before the weight had fully gathered.

It had not escaped her, either, that we arrive in this world enclosed -

held within the quiet safety of the amniotic sac -

and we leave it contained once more, within a coffin.

The only two times we are fully held.

And perhaps -

the only times we are truly at peace.

There are moments when truth arrives softly,

and others when it slips in sideways, disguised as humour.

The Watcher sees what is.

Sage makes it easier to bear.

Between them lies a shared knowing -

of what we carry,

and what, in time, we may learn to release.