Praise for a smaller pack
Lightening our load through embracing worth
Let me start by saying I’m sorry. Added together, I’ve spent a combined month or more on two of the three American long-distance hiking trails. If you know anyone who has done that or more, there’s a good chance they never stop talking about it. Endless memoirs have been written (some are pretty good), and people like me bore others to death with milage numbers and pictures of our tent set up somewhere beautiful. (See below, just kidding)
Nature and wilderness have been a teacher for many. For example, in his book on the Sermon on the Mount, Richard Rohr writes:
The natural, the wildness and freedom of nature, transforms many people. All their lives, they long to return, as if nothing else is real in comparison. Are they perhaps right?
In the case of backpacking, going into nature as a backpacker has some teachable ideas, therefore the long list of memoirs. This bridges into real life. We are all going somewhere. Life is a hike.
The minute one commits to a long hike, the list of decisions about what gear to use comes into play. And there are days worth of YouTube videos and plenty of self-proclaimed and actual experts to consult. Many have a financial interest (ahem, sponsorship) but some are genuinely invested in giving you the best they’ve come to learn.
In praise of a smaller pack
Your backpack size is one of the first choices on the endless list. A pack can be deeply personal. They are housing all the essentials and coming as close to being another limb as anything a hiker has with them.
A bigger pack isn’t always better. Making decisions about what to take with you might be easier; chuck it in, but then there’s the whole carrying it part.
Many long-distance hikers love to share the contents of their pack. Spreading things out on social media for other #hikertrash to look over and comment. Each item represents a careful decision made. This weighs how much? Is it worth it?
I recently added a smaller daypack to my hiking equipment. It won me over for its water-resistant membrane, as I often carry a camera on hikes in the woods near me. If it starts to rain, I can tuck my camera into it and work my way back to the car.
Packing a small pack will mean we have to honor stricter limits. When I use my little day pack, I have to look at things a bit harder before chucking them in. It’s helpful to agree with the limits up front. It’s a deal we make.
As I’ve used this pack for over a year now, I’ve been thinking of how using a small pack can be a good discipline in other facets of life.
I should say that women worldwide have known this from the moment they started carrying a purse, but I’m a guy, so it’s taken me over 50 years and an expensive hobby to now bother you writing about it. But here we are.
How do you interpret limits?
A lack of worth can lead us to see all limits as negative. When we struggle with believing our inherent and divine worth, we may walk around with oppressive thoughts that say, “if only I could have this,” or “do this,” then I’ll have arrived. We spend life waiting for life to happen. And thinking we’re not ready for any of it. Plenty of companies stand ready to exploit this sense of self.
Thinking our pack needs to be bigger takes all shapes depending on the person. Over-functioning, being over-responsible or seeing some deficiency whenever we think of ourselves. A low sense of worth makes us a magnet for these thoughts. We add to our packs and consider ourselves in comparison with others to feel okay. It’s such a fragile state to hike through life this way.
Dealing with a heavy pack
Regardless of the shape of our oversized pack, the way to counteract carrying it can be the same.
Embrace limits. They aren’t going anywhere. And if our life teaches us anything, limits will increase as we age.
Limits are okay. Can we stop interpreting them as negative? Seeing limits only as something to grieve is more the influence of commercial messages or folks trying to inspire us while denying reality. No one will get much of a following by saying: embrace your limitations. Invite a daily reminder of them by visualizing your pack as small. You’re here, for which I’m thankful, but I doubt this message will go viral.
Meditate on how you perceive a limit. At their worst, limits are neutral. Do you only meet them with remorse or sadness? Do they become a driver to do or carry more? Our sense of lack shouldn’t drive us, but for some, it’s the only engine they’ve ever known. I should say it’s not that you can’t grieve, but if that’s only how we feel limits, we may suffer endlessly.
Limits exist. They’re not the product of our failure or deficiency. Efforts to deny this might seem helpful, but living, in reality, will reduce our suffering. Daily agreement with this is like shouldering a pack that might seem small, but its service to us outsizes its capacity to contain things (if that makes sense).
A familiar example is when people say with a note of loss or shame, “We have a limited budget.” Technically the US Department of Defense has a limited budget. We’re not a special mess if we have a limited budget. We’re alive in the world.
A smaller pack = purpose
Think of the freedom to embrace limits as a sign of a more precise purpose. Maybe a finer point is being put on the season of life you’re in. That can be freeing. I learned this from burgers and fries. Bear with me.
There’s a lot of hype around In and Out. It’s a fast food place out west. Regardless of what you might think of the burgers, their menu is a small pack. I was shocked at how few things were listed (yes, I know there’s a secret menu). Their menu seems to say: if you want a salad, maybe we’re not for you. How liberating if you’re a burger place. Right? How good do the burgers have to be if that’s all you’re selling?
Do you want a chicken sandwich? Yeah, Chick-Fil-A is pretty good at those. They don’t sell burgers, though, do they? I believe both of these places owe their quality in part to limitations.
A limit says, “I’m okay with not being for everyone.” Because let’s face it, you won’t be. It’s not a verdict on who you are if you acknowledge this reality. It’s not that you’re not trying hard enough or have given up. You’re living in reality. Renowned guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughn was once booed by the audience at a music festival. Hard to believe, except when you realize it was a jazz festival (not his genre).
Put down your load
Let me encourage you to be gracious with yourself; the world of serving others baits us into over-obligation. Whether serving others as a professional or as a decent human being, I believe a vast majority of people are over-functioning and taking on cumbersome weight to feel adequate. Ironically, it might be making them less effective.
I get why they do it, it feels responsible and necessary, and the work of good people to be burdened. But, I don’t think doing it is in harmony with what Jesus said, “my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
The resistance needs steadiness.
Our pushback must meet these steady messages with as much relentlessness as they present. So, a weekly email about our worth is an invitation to take a load off. Because you are unique as you are, your worth doesn’t come from your production. Therefore, you are already divine; no addition is necessary.
In her book Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto, Tricia Hersey writes,
We must collectively push back against any system that continues to disregard our divinity.
I say the temptation to add and take on more insults our inherent and unassailable dignity. Honoring limits opens us up to our innate loved nature and value that is not withheld if we aren’t constantly expanding.
The art of limitation
The Louvre isn’t an impressive museum just because of what’s in it; it’s also remarkable because of what isn’t in it. An art museum is pretty sparse. I’ve been to a few, and they never look like my garage. Thank goodness. Someone, at some point, drew a line with each room in the museum and said, “there, that beauty is enough.”
The same is said of you this day.
Be well Feral Souls.