Day 20: Under The Weight
What weight are you carrying around? What is it that is weighing down heavily on your chest, keeping you up at night? For many people this weight could be stress or pain, it differs from person to person. However, there is almost always a "burden" in our life.
For me this weight comes in the form of stress, mainly coming from school. For eight weeks now I have been doing school almost nonstop and it has consumed a lot of my time. When I started college in January, I had no idea just how much time it would be taking up. I can now see just how much I have to give up in order to do well in my studies.
Because I did not realize how much time school would take up, I did not realize how little time I would have for the things I love. Such as photography and writing. The last time I edited an image was on September 7th, the last time I completed a photo was on August 31st. It seems like such a long time and it is hard to put your passion on the back burner.
However, I believe we can allow our imaginations to over exaggerate just how big of a burden we are carrying.
We can all attest to the presence of a burden in our lives and there are definitely weights pressing down on us. Yet I believe we can allow them to grow bigger than they actually are. Had I shifted a few things around, I believe I would have found more time for my photography during those eight weeks.
Yes there may have always be a burden, but when we look at our lives objectively I truly believe we can minimize that weight. There will always be something pushing down on our chest, that is simply life. But we can choose to deal with it in a realistic way. By evaluating just how large something is we can break it down into bite sized pieces that are easier to deal with. Instead of letting the problem inflate in our minds eye, dissect the burden into little tiny pieces.
Life is full of many beautiful things, we just have to shift our focus from the burdens to the beauty all around us. When we spend time doing what we love and giving more attention to what we enjoy doing, our burdens can decrease in size. How we view life is incredibly important. If we are always looking for the burdens and the problems they will seem incredibly hug. When we look for the joy in life, the burdens that looked so big suddenly do not seem that important any more.
We must be willing to evaluate our lives in a way that is both objective and logical. Keep your mind from blowing problems into a giant size when they are really a few manageable pieces. Life is far more enjoyable when we spend our time on things we love doing rather than the problems we might be facing. There is time for everything in our live, just try not to spend too much time on your burden.
I wanted to use this photo as a way of representing the weight of stress in my life. For weeks I have felt like I rested under this great weight and it was just far too heavy to get rid of. When I feel the presence of stress in my life, it comes in the form of this pressure on my lungs that just weighs down my breathing. It can feel restrictive and often leads to feeling like I am flying along at break-neck speed.
However, recently I have been considering the fact that I have allowed the magnitude of my stress to be blown out of proportion. It seems like it is this giant rock holding me down from doing what I want to do, when in reality it is simply a frame of mind. I have created a pressure out of a tiny bit of stress. I have kept myself from creating because I have made myself believe that there is less time than there is really.
It comes down to perspective. How will you change your perspective in order to reduce the burden in your life?
(Pressure or Stress)
Through the darkness comes a giant weight and it presses down on our chest. There it rests, unmoving and indestructible, a pressure far too large for us to hold forever.
Until Next Time,
Lillian Merritt