Burdens

Most commonly, burdens are defined as our responsibilities and obligations.

Metaphorically, they are what we carry.

The metaphor might have something to do with Virgil. The poet’s vision of manhood, in the form of his character Aeneas, carries his father on his back and walks with his son by his side. In a classic act of chauvinism, he asks his wife to follow at a distance and then promptly forgets her. This Aeneas is the founder of Rome and likely many an American maxim—with great power comes great responsibility.

Burdens are what weigh us down, encumber us, stymie progress. They make travel cumbersome, but something in us rises to meet the challenge.

That’s all well and good. I’m not going to dispute Virgil, God help the man who finally found courage to read some of his own poems to a small crowd to question his majesty, Virgil the bard. I am here to lay my burdens down—see what I did there?—in the context of the mundane, the everyday. The sober everyday, that is.

This post came to me as I rode my bike to a meeting. I have grown so accustomed to trailing my daughter behind me that I no longer can estimate the time it will take me to bike certain distances. It’s hard hauling her. My son, since learning to ride, has grown competitive. When I am pulling my daughter, he beats me regularly in races. Despite the cheers from my daughter—“Go Daddy Go!” which in her more competitive days sounds like “Get him!”—I can’t physically bike as fast as my six year old when I am carrying the burden of my four year old daughter.

Today, I dropped my son off with a friend and continued my ride to a meeting where I planned on hanging with another sober father to drink coffee and talk recovery. As per usual, during summer days, I lost track of time while talking to the father of my son’s friend. I thought there was no way I could bike the ten or so miles to make it to the meeting on time.

Then I started pedaling.

Without the extra weight of my daughter—the burden—I flew. I was over foot bridges and around bends in seconds. As fast as I was, I got into the meeting with only a minute to spare. The point is that the perception of my speed on the bike had been altered. I had forgotten what it felt like to bike solo. Biking with the extra weight must have made me stronger.

I have felt the sensation before. Back when I would lift weights and play basketball, I found that putting up a shot after leaving the weight room felt like catapulting a pebble.

It felt great to fly on my bike today. I wondered often as I ducked under branches, pedals churning, if I had ever realized how freeing it was just to go for a bike ride.

Would it feel this good if I hadn’t spent my last dozen rides with the weight of my daughter behind me?

Probably not.

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What I’m getting at is there is a balance in the burdens we carry, for without them, how could we know the satisfaction of release?

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I’m realizing is that things that come to balance require counterweights. The greater the burden we carry, the more cathartic the release. Practically speaking, the longer I spend hauling a trailer behind my bicycle, the freer I feel when riding without it.

I’ve always had a soft spot in my psyche for this subject. I’m a Bob Dylan fanatic if I haven’t mentioned that on the blog yet. His work with The Band that resulted in The Basement Tapes and songs like “I Shall Be Released” is my favorite Dylan epoch. Or take his more popular song of similar sentiment (from the same time period, mind you) “When I Paint My Masterpiece”. I dig the old-timey stuff too. Mississippi John Hurt’s “When I Lay My Burdens Down” or Leadbelly’s “C.C. Rider” accomplish the same aesthetic.

My point is that thinking about burdens in the context of how good it feels to be released from them gives me the right perspective on things. It gives me gratitude.

I easily miss this point.

Burdens, for me, quickly become an excuse. My mind gets all wrapped around the weight I carry until I sink into self-pity. Poor me, the ways I sacrifice! It’s easy to become so consumed with the pity of the weight, that I forget the way burdens become blessings over time. This is not to say that it is fair to be over-burdened—and certainly not is this an excuse to pass responsibilities onto others and call it charity.

Maybe what I am getting at is that a major life goal—I am discovering—is to enhance the quality of my burdens. Worrying only for myself and my problems does not result in a very big payout. Carrying more responsibility in the grander realms—the more important stuff like family, sobriety, and career—creates a sublime release from care and worry.

A good barometer of my spiritual condition is how I am perceiving the worry in my life.

My wife was gone for two days this week to be of service to her family a couple hundred miles away.

It was just me and the kids. It was babysitting time, “daddy day care time.” My wife and I laugh at such expressions. We are an equally-responsible parenting team or close to it. Most everyone I know in this generation of fatherhood is. Co-parenting is more equitable than ever. Middle-class membership demands it.

I know I am in a good place because I did not spend the two days with my children secretly pining to be relieved of them. You could say I carried my burdens with pride.

This is my interpretation of Jesus saying, “My yoke is light.” It’s not so much the weight of what we carry that matters but the impact when we set it down.

Even this blog has experienced both sides of the burden spectrum. At times, I cannot in my right mind justify maintaining it—the hours and hours of writing without compensation. But then comes the release. I hear from someone I’ve never met how much my efforts have helped them in their sober journey, in their journey for a simple life.

And then I’m reminded—this blog is one of the lightest burdens I know.

Thanks for reading everyone.

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