Bags

What Do You Carry In Your Mind?

Lately I have been thinking a lot about bags, boxes, and receptacles of various kinds.

I was shopping in Target the other day because I needed to pick up a few things for a party. Their shipment of bags didn’t come in. I had a full hand basket of stuff. No bags.

Of course, no one had any idea before entering the store that there were no bags. They didn’t say anything until you reached the checkout line.

Thankfully, I only needed to purchase just about as much as I could physically carry, so I decided to keep everything and see what happens.

The walk home was so utterly comical and absurd that it inspired a philosophical soliloquy about the importance of bags. But not just bags. Boxes, bowls, cups, vessels, and receptacles of all kinds were at the top of my mind. I was struck by how utterly difficult life without such things could be.

This was made abundantly clear to me during my attempt to walk home from the store.

There I was, a fully grown adult male, in relatively good health, reduced to utter uselessness because I was forced to carry 6-8 items by hand. I had to figure out how to awkwardly position a bag of lemons, a gallon of milk, a carton of eggs, and various other items in my arms so I could avoid dropping anything. My mind and body was completely consumed by the simple task of making it home as quickly as possible while managing the sharp pains in my wrists, forearms, and neck, caused by how clumsily I was grasping of various items.

For those ten to fifteen minutes while walking home, I was an inefficient and helpless entity. Every door I had to open required me to stop, put everything down, open the door, hold it open with my foot, and rearrange all of the items again.

What a difference just ONE bag would make.

How perfectly difficult human life would be without receptacles.

When it comes to carrying physical items, the importance of bags is tangible and obvious. But this made me wonder about the random assortment of things we all carry in our minds.

Do we have bags for everything that we carry mentally? Or are we all, like I was, occasionally reduced to awkwardly trying to carry a random assortment of mental items with no way to contain them? How long is it possible to live like that, and what sort of effect does that have on us over time?

Your mind is not one big bag that can carry everything in your head. It requires mental bags that allow us to organize our thoughts, contain different kinds of problems or ideas, and live more peacefully and efficiently. What are you carrying around right now in your mind without a bag?