What do you carry with with you?

Posted by Unknown at 9:41 PM . Wednesday, March 25, 2009
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I wrote this post almost two years ago in response to a prompt from another blogger.  Because it relates to The Things We Carried and, in some way, to our reflection prompt this week, I thought I would share it with you:


The things they carried were largely determined by necessity.

What they carried was partly a function of rank, partly of field specialty.

They carried catch-as-catch-can.

What they carried varied by mission.

If a mission seemed especially hazardous, or if it involved a place they knew to be bad, they carried everything they could.

On ambush, or other night missions, they carried peculiar odds and ends.

The things they carried were determined to some extent by superstition.

Often, they carried each other, the wounded or weak.

For the most part they carried themselves with poise, a kind of dignity. Now and then, however, there were times of panic, when they squealed or wanted to squeal but couldn't, when they twitched and made moaning sounds and covered their heads and said Dear Jesus and flopped around on the earth and fired their weapons blindly and cringed and sobbed and begged for the noise to stop and went wild and made stupid promises to themselves and to God and to their mothers and fathers, hoping not to die.

They carried the sky.

They carried their own lives.

The above are all quotes from Tim O'Brien's book, The Things They Carried. When I first began to ponder. . . [Julie's question], this book immediately came to mind. I flipped through the book looking for a quote--one quote--to use and so many of O'Brien's sentences seemed to be metaphors for Life.

In my Life backpack, I carry with me the basic necessities: faith, family, friends. I carry some things according to my specialty/rank of motherhood. I carry odds and ends, peculiar to some, that I have picked up along the way (fanatic faith in Myers-Briggs Temperament theory, just to name one).

Like the young men, O'Brien describes, I hope I carry myself with poise and dignity, at least some of the time. I have known those moments of panic, though, when I have cried out to God and flopped on my bed (instead of the earth) and made moaning sounds.

I realized along the way that the soldier metaphor is imperfect, though, as I thought about all the things in life you have to let go... And while O'Brien says that the soldiers "would often discard things along the route of march," it isn't always so easy to discard our emotional baggage, as necessary as it might be to our welfare.

If only it were.

Even when we manage, through perseverance and hard work, to overcome a major obstacle in life, you still carry the memories of it. It may still determine choices you make. I'm not sure it ever truly leaves you.

Perhaps then, it becomes more about finding a way reduce its size and weight enough so that you can pack it in with everything else you need and want to carry with you, leaving you free to continue your journey in Life.

1 comments:

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criscelle said...

I like the part where you said you carried faith as one of the intangible things in your backpack. I do feel like sometimes my backpack is very heavy and most of the time the only way I manage to get through the day is through the hope that maybe tomorrow will be slightly.

April 1, 2009 at 10:20 PM  
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Reflection Prompts - Spring '09

Week 5 of 6 We are quickly coming to the end of this semester. For this week's reflection prompt, I want you to look at the next few weeks. How are you doing in your classes? What do you need to do to continue to be successful? What challenges do you face? What have you learned about reading, study skills, or yourself in this class that will help you in the next few weeks?
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Week 4 of 6 The unexamined life is not worth living. Socrates, in Plato, Dialogues, Apology Greek philosopher in Athens (469 BC - 399 BC) Well, this may be something of an extreme statement but in reading education circles, there are many who might paraphrase this quote in this way: If you don't spend time examining your life and the choices you make, you are less likely to make choices that will make your life better. So this week (or two since we have spring break), we are going to examine who we are by taking one or more preference tests. There is a personality test, two right brain/left brain dominance tests, and a multiple intelligences test. These tests will allow you to see a different way of knowing yourself. By better understanding your personality or learning preference, you can make better choices with your education. At least, that's my theory! ;) Go to the links in the sidebar named Online Preference Assessments. Take one or more of the online assessments and then answer the following reflection prompt: Do the results of the assessment you took seem accurate to you? If so, why. If not, why not? Did you learn anything new about yourself? THEN Taking the results into consideration, reflect on how these might affect your approach to school--the good and the bad.
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Week 3 of 6 Tim O’Brien states: “War stories, like any good story, is finally about the human heart. About the choices we make, or fail to make. The forfeitures in our lives. Stories are to console and to inspire and to help us heal…And a good war story, in my opinion, is a story that strikes you as important, not for war content, but for its heart content.” Reflect on a story that made an impact on your personally and tell why. OR Think of an event in your life and how would you share that story with somebody in a way that you did not share all the facts, but would speak to the human heart.
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Week 2 of 6 What impact has studying the vocabulary required for this class had on you? * Do you notice those words around you now? * Do you approach unfamiliar vocabulary in a different way now? * Do you find yourself using any of the new words you’ve learned? * Are you remembering the words long-term or forgetting them after you test?
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Week 1 of 6 Last week’s reflection asked you to look forward. This week’s post will ask you to look back at the past week, as well as forward to the next. What plans did you makeyou’re your time last week? Did you follow those plans? What reading strategies and study skills did you plan to use? Were you successful? Now look forward to the coming week. What adjustments do you need to make from last week to the next?