We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can’t cope with is therefore your own problem. ~ Douglas Adams

What’s the hardest thing you carry?

There is a really interesting classroom activity that flies around the internet every couple of years, it’s called the baggage activity. It’s a really interesting idea, the students write on index cards anonymously the hardest thing they are carrying emotionally. The thing that keeps them awake at 3AM, the thing they don’t know how to handle or just weighs them down. The cards are then read to show everyone in the class that others are dealing with big things as well and that no one is alone in having troubles. The activity is said to help build a deeper and more empathetic community within the classroom. It’s a neat idea, but in doing a little research on it for this piece I read a very interesting perspective form a long-time teacher.

She pointed out a couple of potential serious problems with the activity related to trauma informed education concepts. First, it might be possible that the reading of the cards, even though they are anonymous could trigger people, either the writer or someone who has had a trauma related to what’s being read. Second, and this one falls into a legal category, is that something on the card may cross into the territory of something that would require a teacher, as a mandated reporter, to act and that would certainly blow up everything the activity is attempting to do,

But I do think there is a good lesson in all of this and it’s about sharing our struggles. No one should carry anything alone, although we all do. Whenever possible and obviously with someone you deeply trust, you should share the thing you’re carrying, share the load if you will. The nice thing about a mental load, unlike actually physical weight, is that sharing someone else’s load doesn’t necessary add the same amount of weight to your load. In fact, the sharing can actually end up lightening both of your loads.

The thing about shouldering the load alone is that it will almost always catch up to you. I am a master at hiding what’s actually going on with me day to day. And at the lowest and worst part of my life I was still going to work every day, doing what I was supposed to do. In fact, I won manager of the year that year at my college. But one day I was walking down the hall, and a chemistry technician, an older woman that I really didn’t like, nor that I interacted with very often was walking past me in the hall. As we were about to walk past each other, out of nowhere she says, “are you ok?” It was this deep concern and she was looking me dead in the eyes. I muttered something and quickly moved on, because somehow she’d seen through all my masks and all of my defenses and saw my pain. I left campus and completely fell apart, if it was not for my good friend Kara really being there for me over the next month or so I really don’t know what would have come of me. It was sharing my burden with her that allowed me to come back to sanity, I almost typed normal, but if you know me, you know normal is never been a word anyone has used to describe me.

So my friends, take that heavy burden and share it with someone, be willing to share theirs, if you do, you’ll have happier days my friends. ~ Rev Kane