by Rev. Lynne Hinton
My grandmother used to have a favorite saying she liked to share whenever I had my arms full and dropped something I was carrying. “Never take a lazy man’s load.” It was her way of telling me that it’s better to take less things more times than it is to try and get it all in one trip. Trying to hold onto too much, she would explain, usually after everything I was holding dropped out of my arms, is a sure recipe for disaster.
I hear her voice inside my head every time I try to carry too many things, thinking I can manage extra bags or books or groceries, and I hear a “my, my, my…” after the accident happens, yet again. One would think that after fifty years of being taught that lesson, I would have learned it. And yet, it still always seems like I attempt to pile more things in my arms, try to carry more than I actually can.
Author Mark Nepo writes about a friend of his who had a similar problem; his, a self-induced fall. He had set out to paint a room in his house. He bought the supplies, drop cloths, paint brushes, cans of paint, mixing sticks, then mixed the paint, and got ready to enter the door to the house to start his project. Nepo’s friend explained, “I teetered there for minutes, trying to open the door, not wanting to put anything down. I was so stubborn. I had the door almost open when I lost my grip, stumbled backwards, and wound up on the ground, red gallons of paint all over me.”
Nepo goes on to write, “Amazingly, we all do this, whether with groceries or paint or with the stories we feel determined to share. We do this with our love, with our sense of truth, even with our pain. It’s such a simple thing, but in a moment of ego we refuse to put down what we carry in order to open the door. Time and time again, we are offered the chance to truly learn this: We cannot hold on to things and enter. We must put down what we carry, open the door, and then take up only what we need to bring inside.”
Both my grandmother’s “lazy man’s load” and Nepo’s “moments of ego” remind me that usually bad things happen when we try to carry too many things or stack too much on our backs, attempt to move forward by clinging to the past or refusing to let go of stuff. There is more calm and less drama, more peace and less disasters when we take things slowly, when we put things aside, when we allow ourselves the room and space to walk.
On the surface, attempting to do too many things at once doesn’t seem like the actions of a lazy person, but rather appears to be the work of an industrious being, a hardworking soul. And yet, to continue fooling yourself into thinking you’re able to keep too many balls in the air, more items on your list than you can remember, too many events for your mind to hold, too much in your bags to carry, will certainly leave you with the same thoughts and emotions as the painter covered in spilled paint.
“Never take a lazy man’s load,” I hear my grandmother say once again; and I sigh as I put down a bag of groceries, open the door, and take them in just one sack at a time.
